#this is an introduction assignment that we have to do in order to not get dropped from the class

[axolotlclown]

this is a very real slide in a presentation that i just turned in for a sociology class. will keep yall posted on what grade i get

[sugarushwriting]

cherry popper enhypen

🍒 jungwon x f reader

adult content featured | read at your own discretion

“are you sure this will work, jungwon?”

“it has to work.”

you bit your lip anxiously, deep in thought. in the end, you nodded your head. “okay, but we should set some rules.”

jungwon raised his eyebrow. “rules?”

“yes rules. one, no physical touching,”

“in order for this to work, i have to touch you.”

you shook your head, “no, there has to be a way around it,”

“well cherry, there isn’t,” jungwon argued, rolling his eyes with a huff. now he was regretting this deal.

“second, no feelings,”

“oh trust me, that won’t be hard whatsoever.” jungwon scoffed.

this time you rolled your eyes. “i won’t do your work, but i will help you.”

“fair enough, i guess.” he shrugged. you’d end up doing it anyway once you’d realize how busy he was with after school activities, clubs and his sports. plus his social life.

“great, what’s your address and i can stop by tonight and we can begin that paper of yours?”

jungwon wrote down the address of his shared house with his friends near campus on your planner.

“your ugly handwriting in my pretty planner, how dare you!”

“see you later, cherry.” jungwon smirked.

later that evening, you found yourself outside of jungwon’s house around 6. you knocked for a good five minutes before someone even opened the door.

a tall, brooding young man opened the door, with dark hair. he didn’t seem happy. “what do you want?” his voice was deep and it sent shivers through your body.

“um, oh, here to see, uh, jungwon?” you replied, playing with the string of your hoodie.

“is that a question or statement?” the boy laughed.

“ni-ki leave her alone. she’ll break out in hives.” you heard jungwon laugh.

“no i won’t!” you defended. jungwon acts like you can’t talk to the opposite sex.

the boy, ni-ki laughed, and walked away leaving you and jungwon. “let’s go up to my room.”

“your room? why not the living room?” you nearly squeaked.

“because i have 2 other roommates who are loud and will bother us. and i am more than sure they will bring company over.”

without additional argument you followed jungwon up the steps to his bedroom. his room being neat, shocked you.

he sat on the floor at the edge of the bed, and patted the spot next to him, grabbing his laptop.

“where should we start?” jungwon asked, opening the word document.

you explained how you typically liked to start from the conclusion, then work on an introduction. after about an hour, you’ve helped jungwon with his paper, and he had over half of it completed.

“my brain cannot take it anymore.” he groaned, shutting his laptop. “i need food.” he stood up with a stretch, his shirt rising up showing off his toned stomach. he looked down to you, “want anything?”

your thoughts immediately turned to something inappropriate. you swallowed, “no i’m fine.” you smiled weakly.

jungwon nodded once and walked out his room leaving you alone to finally breathe. this is the longest you’ve been this close to jungwon since like elementary school.

you couldn’t believe it when he came up to you earlier wanting to make a deal. he would pretend to be your boyfriend if you help would agree to help him with his assignments.

why?

to make your bully leave you alone. even in university, bullies still existed which was ridiculous but was the sad truth. he was currently behind in some of his classes due to his busy schedule and needed the help.

you took the time to look around his room, to get a feel of the real jungwon. action figures, pictures of him and his family, his friends, certificates and awards, a karate award, other trophies.

“spying on me now, cherry?”

“huh?” you whirled around seeing jungwon holding a cherry pepsi. one of your favorite drinks. maybe he liked them too.

but he surprised you when he held it out for you. “for me?” you squealed, your voice betraying you. jungwon chuckled and nodded with a smile.

“of course, why else do you think i call you cherry? i’ve seen the way you will inhale anything cherry flavored.”

“are you making fun of me?”

“no, i find it cute how your eyes light up at anything cherry flavored.”

≽^•⩊•^≼

three weeks later, and things to seem have been going well. other than what happened yesterday. you've chosen to ignore it and not bring it up to jungwon, however, jungwon has noticed something off in you.

right now, you were reading peacefully while also at his soccer practice. nothing interesting really, he was the goalie, and although you did find him and his teammates eye candy, it's not like they would find much interest in you.

your chest burned and tears threatened to spill at the remembrance of the harsh words from yesterday.

"what's got that pout on your face, cherry?" his voice startled you out of your thoughts, and you shook your head.

"no--nothing." you huffed, looking back down to your book.

jungwon looked down to you, eyebrows coming together. "doesn't look like nothing. something has got you deep in thought."

"it's nothing jungwon, can we drop it?"

"is it something, or someone?"

you stood up from the bleachers, "i said drop it!" you used the back of your hand to wipe away a tear that came down, and quickly shut your book, rushing off.

jungwon wasn't going to let this go. he wanted to know who hurt you. within these three weeks, he became fond of you. very quickly he may add.

"cherry, wait up!" he chased after you. you walked quicker. you don't know where you were going, but you were trying to hide from jungwon before he could see you cry. but you wasn't that lucky. his legs were longer than yours.

"cherry, hold up!" he ran in front of you, stopping you in front of the locker rooms. "cherry, talk to me." jungwon sighed, tipping your chin up so you could look into his eyes.

you wanted to melt. in these weeks, you've also became fond of him. any rumors you've heard about him, were being debunked by his actual personality and words. he was kind, gentle, goofy and occasionally clumsy when he didn't mean to be.

"jungwon--," your voice broke and it ruined him. he pulled you into the women's locker room (which was completely empty and out of order as it was being prepared to be remodeled).

he pushed you against the door and locked it behind you. "tell me what happened. now." he demanded. "no bullshit."

so you told him what your bullies told you. how they cornered you and made remarks. how they claimed your relationship with jungwon was nothing but staged and fake. they never saw jungwon kiss you or touch you. how could that be a real relationship? they mocked how you'd never be in a relationship. not with jungwon, not with anyone, not even jake sim, the legend of the school who would sleep with almost any girl on campus would want to touch you.

you sniffed. "you were right, this was stupid. this was never going to work."

"i didn't say that, cherry." he sighed, and used his knuckle to graze your cheek. "in order for this to work, i have to touch you. not saying i have to grab your ass, or stick my hands down your pants."

your cheeks felt hot at the thought of him doing that. "jungwon,"

"we can take it slow, okay? small kisses to your forehead, cheek, neck. hugs from behind. playing with your hair. i can give you piggy back rides." he laughed.

"i never had a boyfriend, jungwon!" you bursted out.

"okay, and?" jungwon chuckled.

"jungwon, it means i'm inexperienced."

"i'm not asking to pop your cherry, cherry."

you slapped his shoulder. "jungwon, i'm inexperienced in all aspects."

"even hugging a guy?" jungwon asked dumbfounded and you nodded shameful.

"a kiss?"

you shook your head. "haven't even had my first kiss, jungwon." you signed, thankful to finally let out the reason you've been so adamant on not letting jungwon be so flirty and touchy with you.

jungwon's eyes darkened with desire. "can i change all of that, cherry? please."

"i mean, yeah with hugs, maybe innocent kisses,"

"no cherry," jungwon took in a deep breath, "i want your hugs, kisses, and more."

"oh, um, maybe, eventually,"

jungwon shook his head, "no, now please." jungwon begged.

the thought of your innocence being taken away by someone else? absolutely not.

"oh, uh, well, we can go to my place, or yours," you were trying your best to handle this news, and lets say, you weren't handling it well.

its not because you didn't want to, its because it was jungwon? NOW?

"no, cherry, now."

you snorted. "so gentleman of you." you crossed your arms, your arms brushing against his chest. you pushed him away. this was happening so fast, your heart beating out of your chest.

did you want to lose your virginity, all your onces in a soon to be remodeled women's locker room?

yes.

wouldn't this be a hot story for your other friends? wouldn't this be a hot story for your bullies? to make them shut up and tell them not only did you lose your virginity, but got railed by THE yang jungwon in a women's locker room?

"tell me what's going through that pretty head of yours, cherry." jungwon smiled, his thumb tracing down your cheek to your bottom lip.

for once, it wasn't the books you were reading, or the fictional men on your screen making you hot and bothered. it was a real man standing in front of you.

"i think i broke rule number two." you quietly said.

"i broke that rule the day i met you, cherry." jungwon's eyes burning with need, his thumb resting on your lip. he leaned in, tasting your lips for a sweet second before pulling back leaving you wanting more.

"i think i want to be railed by you." you spoke aloud before even thinking.

jungwon smiled with a chuckle. "i can do that cherry, just not today, okay? or at least, not the first round."

jungwon picked you up, your legs automatically wrapping around his waist, your arms around his neck. your right hand went to the back of his blonde hair. your new found confidence pulled him into you, wanting his soft lips back onto yours.

oh mother heavens, was you really about to lose your virginity right now? in a women's locker room? with yang jungwon? your heart was beating so fast in your chest, adrenaline rushing your veins. not because you were going to regret this. but because you were so thrilled. excited.

jungwon carried you a little further back into the locker room, your back resting against a flat wall. his kisses traveled from your lips, your cheek, down your neck, his lips finding a weak spot once he heard a whine come from your lips.

meanwhile, two of his fingers busied themselves sneaking into the front of your shorts, softly tracing over the cotton of your underwear. "fuck, why couldn't you have worn a skirt." jungwon whispered into your neck, before attaching his lips once again.

"i don't own many skirts, jungwon." you leaned your head back, so he had easier access to your neck.

"we have to change that." jungwon sighed, nibbling on your neck, using his teeth, a bigger whine coming from your lips.

you felt him harden in his pants, and you're sure his fingers felt yourself becoming wetter at the moment.

you whimpered when his lips disconnected from your skin, and he slid his fingers from your shorts, and slid your body down from his.

before you could ask why, he removed his sweaty shirt and placed it on the ground. he nodded his head, signaling for you to lay down. with no questions, you put your book down (which you somehow still had a grip on) and sat slowly down on his shirt and he leaned down, his legs on either side of your knees.

his fingers went to the button of your shorts, and pulled those down along with your underwear in a quick, smooth, movement. no time to think, jungwon was quick with his movements. he laid in-between your legs, his mouth watering over your core, he places your thighs on each of his shoulders, ready for his next taste of you.

he dove in like a mad man, sucking, licking, biting, his fingers gripping your thighs to keep them in place. your hand went to grip the top of his blonde locks, back arching from the ground. you bit your bottom lip to keep from sounds getting too loud cause although no one would come in, people were still passing by.

you moved your head to one side, biting on your sleeve to contain any noise. you didn't believe a man's tongue would feel this good on you. and what felt even better was when jungwon added a finger slowly into your cunt. the wetness of you helped with the pain, his wide shoulders keeping your legs apart for him.

jungwon soon added a second, then a third finger to stretch you out. it started to sting, tears threatening to spill out. jungwon would check on you, but you would shake your head stating you were fine and for him to keep going. really by pushing his head back down, wanting his nose to rub back against your clit.

a weirdness felt at the pit of your stomach, and your legs began to shake. this seems much more intense than other orgasms you've given yourself. "jun, jungie, so close." you moaned you, eyes tightening.

"if i let you come, do you think you can come a second time when i fuck you cherry?" jungwon asked and you nodded.

"yes jungwon, promise." you groaned as jungwon's three fingers kept their pace, his hot breath on your core, thumb brushing your clit. soon you were coming apart on jungwon's fingers and tongue.

"can't wait to ruin you some more." jungwon whispered, your energy coming back from the first orgasm. he moved your legs off his shoulders, them slightly sore after he kept them apart for what seems like hours, but was only 5 or 6 minutes.

jungwon stood up to remove his practice shorts and boxers from his body, standing completely naked in front of you. entranced by his abs, and overall fit body, you removed your shirt and bra. jungwon smiled that you felt comfortable enough to remove the rest of your clothing.

jungwon leaned back down, to position himself, his tip at your entrance. "cherry, i don't have a condom, are you okay with that?"

you nodded. "yes. i, i know your reputation for being careful and clean. i trust you jungwon." you smiled, wrapping your arms arounds his broad shoulders. your hand and fingers spread in his hair, soothingly for him.

jungwon leaned down to kiss you, to distract you as he pushed himself into your tight cunt. you felt the sting, the thickness, your walls trying to acclimate this new feeling. you accidentally bit his lower lip, tugging it when you moved yourself away. jungwon rested his forehead against yours, eyes looking into yours, nose nudging yours once, a smile stretching against his face.

your face scrunched in uncomfortableness, but just for a moment. it soon went away after a while. "ever played with yourself?" jungwon asked trying to district your mind.

you nodded, "yeah, few times."

"who did you think of?"

"oh um, fictional characters, or my books,"

as your rambled, jungwon went balls deep, causing you to jolt, and your legs tightened around his waist. "shit, fuck!" you screamed then moaned.

"sorry cherry, you feel good," jungwon grumbled, kissing you deeply. you nodded into the kiss, and jungwon pulled back only to go balls deep once again.

your entire grip on him tightened. his waist, his broad shoulders, you walls gipped him tighter. "so much better than fictional characters and books." you whispered, but jungwon heard you with a smile.

jungwon sat up on his knees, leaning against his ankles, gripping your waist in his big hands, slightly sitting you up so the back of your thighs rested against his thighs. this new angle caused for you to reach your orgasm even quicker, especially when jungwon's thumb began rubbing circles on your clit, his other fingers teasing your nipples and playing with your neglected breasts.

"jungwon, close again, please," you began to beg, wanting the next release.

"i got you cherry, just focus on letting go for me."

and that you did. soon you were coming on jungwon, juices leaking in-between the both of you. you, not even aware of that possibility of how much could come out of you in your first release. jungwon's orgasm followed not long after, coming in you, but pulling out to finish spilling his come onto your cunt, the rest leaking out of you. jungwon instantly getting hard after getting soft seeing his come leaking out of you, mixed with your own.

“fuck can we do this again?” jungwon huffed, trying to catch his breath.

you laughed. “yeah, as long as we do it in front of the bullies.”

jungwon laughed this time. “how about we just send them a nice video instead?”

ᓚᘏᗢ

© work of sugarushwriting | do not repost as your own or translate

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[yannig]

I need to talk about this scene

gifs by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

A lot has been said about it already, but I want to examine how the dance - and Khanin's disregard for its rules - serves as a parallel to Emalian Royalty's as a whole and how Khanin reacts to it.

I genuinely think this could have been the show's first scene; it says so much about Khanin, what he thinks of Emaly's rigid social order and endless protocols, and what kind of consequences might emerge from breaking them.

Which is especially interesting because it is Khanin's first introduction to the public. Just like the first scene of a story sets up themes, expectations and characters, Khanin is setting up a very specific image of himself - and I'm not sure how much of it is intentional.

Let's start with saying that I've never done ballroom dancing. I've however been doing folk dancing for a while, and they have a lot in common, especially in regards to couple dances (ballroom mostly tends to be much more formal about it). I'll add that I've done some of it in queer spaces with a focus on de-gendering dance.

I wanna go over a few basis for couple dances before we get into the meat of it. I promise I'll keep it relevant.

You can get rid of the man/woman dichotomy if you want, but you still need a guide/lead and a follow. Most couples dances (and especially ballroom dances) will not work if you don't agree on who's guiding and who's following.

Guiding and following are two different things, and two different skills.

For dances where both partners do different things, if you want to be able to dance both roles, you need to learn both of them. Twirling someone is a very different experience from being twirled.

For dances with partner switches, it's especially important to pick a role and stick to it. I've danced some of them in queer balls where we hadn't clearly defined roles before starting, and it was a mess. A funny mess, but a mess nonetheless.

You don't usually pick your next partner at random. Most dances with partner switches have a predetermined order - like the follow going to the next partner on the left and the lead to the next partner on the right.

With all that in mind, let's get to the actual scene.

Going to dance with Charan is Khanin stepping out - literally - of the role that was assigned to him

Khanin is a Prince, and in this context it means he's supposed to only dance with women of equivalent status - and, of course, lead.

In that regard, ballroom dancing is a very good metaphor for the royalty's rigid protocols and roles as Khanin sees it: predetermined roles that don't fit him, strict rules he doesn't want to follow, and a social order deciding in his place who he's to spend time with.

It's also a very clear illustration of why homophobia is just another face of the patriarchy. If, as a man, you wish to dance with another man, you need to place one of you "in the woman's role" - and vice-versa for two women. Which of course, for a system where men and women's roles are strictly separated and hierarchized, is a problem. Don't get me wrong, it's a basic argument, but still not a point a lot of BLs make - in part for reasons of "BL bubble where homophobia doesn't exist" and in part for reasons of "women? what are those?".

Having said that:

Choosing to dance with a man is one thing. It's a very clear way to state he's gay (or at the very least attracted to men, but we all know how the medias will read that), but as the King says, time have changed. That was not subtle but it's not the worse.

The class difference is maybe a bit more problematic, but it's still not the worse. Charan might not be royalty per se, but he's still the King's pupil, and the fact that he was among the dancers at all means he is of sufficient status to interact with members of royalty.

Remember, this is a partner-switching dance. Considering how few dancers were on the dance-floor, it's very likely each man would have ended up dancing with every woman if Khanin's stunt hadn't interrupted the dance. Which means Charan would have almost certainly danced with Ava. If he's good enough for once dance with her, he's good enough for one dance with Khanin - they are of same status after all (even though Ava's a woman).

In my opinion, the real problem is that, in imposing himself on Charan, Khanin takes the role of the follow.

Don't get me wrong, realistically it was the only sensible decision. Khanin has no reason to assume Charan knows how to follow, and even if he did, if he's gonna spring this on poor Charan, might as well make it as easy as possible for him, and let him keep his role as a guide.

But it puts Khanin in the role of the follow. Which is to say the role of the woman. And this is a sexist society, Ava's situation has made that very clear!

Up until she decided to impose herself in the competition (which was only made possible by Khanin's return, and support), women were considered not good enough for the royal competition. Even though the one who takes part in the competition is not the one who ends up on the throne. Even though Ramil himself admits Ava is supposed to be better than him at fencing. If was so obvious it was not even written in the rules!

So Khanin puts himself in a woman's role. In a position to follow someone's else's directions. And worse, he lowers himself even more by choosing someone of significantly lower status than his own. That's where the real problems begin.

(and you know, the fact that he made his choice very obvious by stumbling into the longest dip in the world in front of all the cameras)

He's a Prince, he's not supposed to lower himself in front of anyone except higher-ranking royals (which is like 5 people). In choosing to dance with Charan in public, in giving him the lead, Khanin steps out of his status as Prince.

On the day of his coronation.

Keep in mind that this scene is his introduction to high society, Emaly at large, and even the world. And what's the message he chooses to send about himself? That spending time with Charan is more important to him than his status as a Prince. That's the real scandal here.

Here's the thing though: I do think Khanin is aware of the first two points. I'm not sure how much a realizes the third. Because he was raised in the UK, with significantly less hierarchies and sexism, I'm not sure he realized exactly how big of a transgression he's made. And I think a lot is going to hang on Khanin's understanding of the royalty's rules, so it's a major topic.

That been said:

Going to dance with Charan is at least partially premeditated on Khanin's part

Is it possible that Khanin just saw an opportunity when Charan was close, and decided "fuck it, I wanna dance with my crush"?

Yes.

However, to be able to pull that off, he needed to know the steps. Which means he trained both roles when learning to dance. Which in turns means he convinced his dance teacher (almost certainly Chakri) to teach him both the man and the woman's steps. Teacher who most certainly first tried to explain how it wasn't proper for Khanin to follow.

So Khanin does know he's breaking several rules at once, and very much prepared to do so in advance. Had he decided from the start he wanted to dance with Charan during his coronation? Who knows. But there is an undeniable level of preparation and premeditation on his part. I'm still not sure he understand how badly he might have upset some of the more traditional members of court, but he's certainly not clueless.

However, there's one point I'm really not sure he's taken into account:

Khanin going to dance with Charan is creating a mess for a lot more than the both of them.

I swear I screamed at him when he went for Charan, because even in a context where no one cares about your gender, you don't switch role mid-dance without warning. You're just gonna make a mess!

There are two women who just got abandoned in the middle of that dance-floor with no warning. And next change, everyone else is going to get thrown off-rhythm because there are now 4 people who are absolutely not where they should be.

Of course, he did end up interrupting the dance entirely with that dip from hell. But the other option was chaos, so I'm not sure which is worse.

In that regard, ballroom dancing is a really good demonstration of how fragile such a rigid system is, how the slightest imperfection can make the entire machine glitch. Khanin makes one move toward his crush and everyone gets thrown off-balance (and not just because half the dancers are also gay and looking at him jealously).

It's also a good demonstration of how Khanin's rule breaking can have much more far-reaching consequences than he anticipated.

Did he now how it would paint him? I'd yes say, overall.

Did he realize how it would impact the rest of the dancers? I'm not so sure. Either he didn't know or he didn't care, but the consequences are there.

And I'm pretty sure this idea is going to be central, that Khanin's actions will have a wider impact than intended, and that he might not always realize it at the time (or at all).

It's partly visible already in his efforts to keep Charan at his side, which Charan is already paying for. And I'd argue in his visit to Bhuchongpisut, which had many unexpected consequences, the worst of which Khanin isn't even aware of.

And it makes an interesting contrast with Ramil, who of course knows exactly who will be impacted by his actions.

[the-offside-rule]

Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) - Baking Challenge

Day 5 of Christmas

Prompt: Baking Challenge

25 Days of Christmas

The camera blinked on, and the familiar hum of festive music filled the air. You grinned as you stood beside Jude Bellingham, Real Madrid’s rising star, while Y/n's teammate, Carla Camacho, and her partner in crime for the day, Kylian Mbappe, prepared on the other side of the kitchen.."Hola Madradistas!" Y/n greeted the camera, waving enthusiastically. "Today, we’re bringing you a special Christmas challenge. Jude and I-" She nudged him with her elbow, causing him to chuckle. "are winning." Jude flashed a smile to the camera. "Oh yes. I don't bake but Y/n’s the pro, so I’m in good hands."

"Good hands?" Carla quipped from across the kitchen, raising an eyebrow. "I think you’re just here for the entertainment, Jude." Kylian joined in with a playful smirk. "And to hold the GoPro, right?" He winked at Y/n, knowing Jude's role was likely going to be more decorative than practical. She rolled her eyes playfully. "Exactly. Jude is the GoPro holder and maybe, maybe he’ll help me mix a few ingredients if I trust him enough." Jude looked at the camera in disbelief. "Wow, thanks for the confidence, Y/n." Jude teased. "I’ll do my best!" Jude leaned closer to Y/N, wrapping an arm over her shoulder with an exaggerated smirk. “Anyways, on this side, we have the winning team: Y/n and, of course, yours truly, Jude Bellingham.”

She rolled her eyes dramatically but couldn’t help the giggle that escaped. "And on the other side, we have the ‘try-hard’ team. Kylian Mbappe and my amazing teammate Carla Camacho." Carla waved enthusiastically at the camera. "We’re not just trying, we’re winning." Kylian, ever the competitor, crossed his arms and smirked at Jude. "Just so you know, Bellingham, we’ve got this." Jude laughed, nudging Y/n. "Let’s just say baking’s a bit… out of my skill set." Y/n turned to him, eyebrows raised. "That’s putting it mildly, Jude. Just… try not to ruin everything, okay?"

With the introductions done, the card with their assigned task was handed to both teams. Y/n’s eyes scanned the instructions as she tried not to laugh at Jude’s confused expression.

The crew counted down until the time started. 3....2....1....start! Jude knocked a jar of untensils almost immediately, casuing the pair burst into laughter as she pointed to the camera in front of them. "Haven't even started and youve messed it up!" She grabbed the card detailing the challenge and ingredients. "So, we’re making a Christmas cake." She announced to the camera, holding up the recipe card. "Sounds simple enough. Jude leaned in, squinting at the ingredients. "Uh, you sure about that?" Y/n ignored him and quickly divided the tasks, aware of his limited experience in the kitchen. "Alright, Jude, I’ve got an important job for you." His eyes lit up. "Yeah?"

She grinned, grabbing the GoPro from the table. "You’re going to be our cameraman. Just film the process, and we’ll be fine." Jude pouted, but his playful energy was undeniable. "Seriously? That’s all I get to do?" She nodded. "Out of order, that is." Jude chuckled and took the stand of the goprop, adjusting it like it was some highly technical piece of equipment. "Alright, babes. What are we doing?" He said with a wink, focusing it on you. Carla laughed as she and Kylian began grabbing their ingredients. "You’re giving him the easy job, Y/n! Thats cheating, no?" The crew agreed. "Trust me, it's for the best." Y/n replied, already sifting flour into a bowl. "If you guys wanna be home at a respectable hour, you'll let us do our thing and let them do their's." Jude faked a look of offense but quickly turned his grin back toward the GoPro, focusing on her with it. "Right, filming duties it is. I’ll make sure to get your good side, Y/n." He added cheekily. "Every side is my good side." She retorted. Jude was taken back by that answer and looked over to the main camera. She couldn’t help but laugh, shaking her head as she concentrated on her task. "Just don't mess this up, Jude. The cake is what matters."

Although Y/n and Jude's side seemed chaotic, things were moving slower. Jude, holding the GoPro a little too close to his face, was narrating their every move in an over-the-top commentator voice. "Here we see Y/n expertly cracking eggs. Will she succeed, or will it all go horribly wrong? Stay tuned!" Y/n tried not to laugh, her focus on measuring the butter. "Jude, please! This is serious!" Jude leaned in with the GoPro. "Very serious, indeed."

As she measured out the ingredients, Jude leaned closer, whispering. "I feel like we’ve already won this. No one’s gonna even notice what the cake looks like when we’re the one's making it, right?" Y/n bit back a smile, glancing at him. "Yeah, but I’m not sure we get extra points for flirting." She grinned. "Maybe we should." Jude shot back with a wink, making her laugh harder. "Alright, focus!" Y/n said, waving a spoon in front of him while trying not to blush. "We’ve got a cake to make."

Carla, already working diligently with Kylian, glanced over and raised an eyebrow. "Is anyone baking on your team or just flirting?" Kylian chuckled. "You know, Carla and I might actually win this thing at this rate." Jude pointed the GoPro at them, narrowing his eyes. "We’re strategizing over here, thank you very much. Y/n’s just multitasking better than you lot."

"Right." She said, holding back a laugh as you stirred the mixture. Jude kept panning the camera over her shoulder, making silly commentary every few minutes. Y/n had to pause multiple times, either because she was laughing too hard or because Jude distracted her with another one-liner. At one point, he leaned in closer. "You’re really good at this, you know? Maybe I should let you take charge more often." She playfully nudged him away. "I always take charge. You’re just here for moral support." He grinned. "I’m killing it at that part, though, right?"

"Sure." She giggled. After a few more moments of him joking around, Jude finally set the GoPro aside and asked. "Come on, let me do something."

Y/n looked at him cautiously, hesitating. "Can you?" He handed her the GoPro, not even giving her an answer. "Can I mix? I'm not a complete idiot." He scoffed. "Okay, you can mix the batter. But don’t break anything, alright?" As Y/n filmed, Jude gave his own commentary. "So, the technique Im doing bere is clockwise and then anti-clockwise because...science, I think." Y/n sniggerwd behind the camera upon hearing his reasoning. "And I'm moving the bowl too because by doing this, it'll get more flavour. Camera-girl, am I right, or am I right?" He asked. Y/n turned the GoPro to focus on herself. "He's just in his own little world. I'm taking a well deserved break and-" She was cut off by the glass bowl falling onto the ground and shattering, the whole batter now on the floor. She turned the GoPro to Jude, matching her equally shocked face. "Jude!" Y/n gasped, wide-eyed. Jude’s grin slowly returned to his face, both embarrassed and stifling laughter. "Okay, okay, I can explain!" Y/n shook her head, trying not to laugh but failing miserably. "You had one job, Jude. One!"

From across the table, Kylian and Carla paused, watching the scene unfold. Kylian smirked. "Mate, what is that?" Jude raised his hands in mock defense. "It’s not my fault! The bowl just slipped!" Y/n, still chuckling, grabbed a new bowl and shooed him away. "Alright, new plan. You’re officially banned from anything breakable. Just… film again." Jude picked up the GoPro with a guilty grin. "You know I’m more of an production guy than a baking guy, right?"

"Trust me, I’ve noticed."

Despite the chaos, Y/n managed to mix the cake batter smoothly. She poured it into the tin, with Jude’s constant commentary keeping her laughing. "And now, the queen of baking herself, Y/n, swoops in to save the day, as always." After what felt like a small miracle, the cake was in the oven. Y/n turned to Jude, giving him a light shove. "You’re lucky I’m good at this." Y/n said exasperated into the camera. "I’m just here to make you look even better." He teased, leaning in closer, his playful smirk never leaving his face.

decorating the cake as the finishing touches came together. After some strategic placement of holiday-themed decorations and a light dusting of powdered sugar, you stood back and admired your creation. It was no masterpiece, but it was festive and definitely presentable. "Done!" She announced proudly, and Jude zoomed in with the GoPro. "Look at that! That’s teamwork right there." He said, though most of the work had been her own. Carla and Kylian also finished around the same time, presenting their cake, which was surprisingly neat. The four players gathered in front of the camera again for the big reveal.

As the teams presented their final products to the camera, Jude leaned in close to Y/n. "See, I didn’t ruin everything. Y/n smiled, shaking her head. "You came pretty close." Carla glanced over and laughed. "Alright, moment of truth." Jude said, still holding the GoPro close to your cake. "Who did it better?" They tried one another's cakes, both acty ending up very well. "Well, I think you two win for most… entertaining, at least." Carla smiled. Kylian nodded along. "But if we're talking about overall, I think we all know the answer here."

"No, no, no." Y/n interjected. "Our cake is festive and cute, and most importantly, edible." Jude nodded enthusiastically, pointing at the camera. "Yep, edible is key. And look at that snowflake design. Pure artistry from us." She turned and arched a brow at him, making the other two laugh. "Anyway, we win for sure."

"No, you don’t." Carla laughed. "Carla! Te golpeaste la cabeza o qué? Así es como se supone que debe saber un pastel! Try it again!" The trio laughed as Y/n grantically fed her teammate another piece. "Not bad, right? Even with Jude just filming!" Jude laughed, finally dropping the GoPro and grabbing a fork. "Hey, I helped with morale! And filming is harder than it looks!"

As the camera cut off, Jude leaned in close, his voice low. "Next time, I promise I’ll actually help bake." He said. "Good." She replied with a smirk. "Because I’m not carrying you through every challenge, Bellingham." He chuckled, that familiar playful glint in his eyes. "You know you love it."

[beyondthesefourwalls]

And I Want To Make Her Mine

Summary: Javy thought it was too good to be true when he saw you, the girl he had crushed on for almost a year, standing in the Hard Deck. But there you were, looking just as beautiful as you always had. He thought maybe he’d finally get his chance with you after all this time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one whose attention you caught.

Pairing: Javy Machado x Reader (no use of y/n)

Warnings: Language, somewhat suggestive thoughts. The Blonde One™️.

Word Count: 3.9K 

Notes: Written for @roosterforme's '80s Rocktober challenge using the song Jessie’s Girl by Rick Springfield. Sorry it’s so late, Em! But hopefully some Javy content makes up for it. 

-------

--

Javy stood at the bar, waiting for Penny to bring him the beer that he ordered. He was the first out of his friends to arrive and he figured that there was no point in waiting for them. It had been a long week, and he was ready to unwind for the weekend before doing it all again come Monday. A flash of color caught his eye and he looked over for a moment, only to do a double take and have the wind damn near knocked out of him. He stuttered out your name as shock coursed through his veins. He had to be seeing things, he thought. But then your head turned, and those eyes he remembered so well widened in surprised recognition. 

“Oh my God. Javy?!” 

“Holy shit,” he breathed, shaking his head to try and clear it. His heart sped up in his chest when you wrapped your arms around him in a tight, but way too brief, embrace. “Hi. What-what are you doing here?”  

“I transferred to North Island, I start my new post on Monday morning,” you told him as you pulled away, smiling brightly. “Wait. Are you stationed here?” 

“I am,” he said, his smile matching yours. 

He couldn’t believe his luck that this was happening right now. You had been an administrative assistant at his last duty station, and he had harbored a crush on you for the year that he had been there. You were always friendly with him, matching his flirting at the same level, and the two of you had even grabbed drinks a few times, albeit with other people in attendance. He had never bucked up the courage to ask you out, but had promised himself he would finally bite the bullet as soon as he got back from his last deployment. He had the whole thing planned - dinner and dancing on the pier - only to never be able to actually follow through after orders of a permanent assignment at Top Gun. He had never expected to see you again, yet now you were here, standing right in front of him. 

As Javy quickly scanned your face, he took notice of how you were still just as breathtaking. He couldn't help but let his eyes linger on you for a moment too long. You were wearing a simple pair of jeans and a tank top, the clothing hugging your curves in all the right places. He could feel his cheeks heating and quickly looked back up to meet your eyes.

"Wow, small world," he said with a chuckle. "It's good to see you again." 

"It's good to see you too," you replied, your smile never faltering. "It's been what, a year?" 

"Too long," he said, feeling a little tongue-tied. He noticed that you didn’t have a drink in your hand just yet and opened his mouth to ask if he could maybe buy you one when a hand clapped roughly onto his shoulder, a familiar head of blonde hair saddling up beside him.  

“Well well well, who do we have here?” 

Javy turned to see Jake grinning mischievously, his green eyes trained on you. He felt his stomach twist nervously, knowing that look in his best friend’s eye all too well. Begrudgingly, he gave a quick introduction. "She was stationed down in Florida with me, but is transferring here. We were just catching up," he said, trying to steer the conversation back to you and him. 

“Nice to meet you," Jake said, flashing you a charming smile. “It’s an absolute sin that you don’t have a drink in your hand, darlin’. You mind if I fix that for you?” 

His eyes widened and panic washed over him when he realized what it was Jake was doing. Either his best friend hadn’t recognized that Javy was about to do the same thing or he simply didn’t care. Either way, he was shooting his shot, and much to his own dismay, you were laughing at the line the blonde had served you. He stared at him with a clenched jaw, missing the way you glanced at him first, a moment of silence passing before you agreed to the proposition. 

Before he even really knew what was happening, Jake was placing a hand on the small of your back and turning to the bar to order you a drink. At the same time, the rest of his friends arrived, and Javy was dragged into a conversation with Phoenix and Rooster about something that had happened earlier that day. He kept trying to wrap up the conversation without being rude, and when the two fellow aviators finally retreated to the pool table, he breathed a sigh of relief. He turned back to where you and Jake had been leaning against the bar completely intending on reasoning his conversation with you and hopefully nudging his best friend out of the way. But when he laid eyes on you, his heart sank. 

You were laughing at something Jake said, your body leaning into his. Your smile was wide and your face happy, and it was so clear that you were enjoying yourself. You brought your hand up to rest against Jake’s bicep as you threw your head back and laughed, and it felt almost like he was being punched in the face. 

Instead of interrupting like he had intended, he threw the rest of his drink back and left the bar. 

___

Javy knew he would only get away with ignoring Jake for so long, and he was proven right first thing Monday morning when he was changing into his uniform after hitting the gym on base before their morning brief. 

“Where’d you disappear to on Friday night?” 

“Didn’t feel good all of a sudden,” he mumbled in response, and really, he wasn’t technically lying. He still felt sick imagining you with him, and he had spent all weekend moping about it. 

“That why you dodged my texts, too?” 

“Yup.”

Jake snorted, clearly amused by the answer, and Javy felt a flare of annoyance course through him. 

“Well you missed a good night. That girl you introduced me to is something else. Did you know she was from Texas?” 

Javy did know that, and he was suddenly incredibly resentful that Jake did, too. It was something that he would have in common with you, and just another reason why he was sure the blonde might be more appealing. From what he remembered, you loved talking about home.

“We were thinking of grabbing dinner this week, you sh-“

Javy slammed his locker shut with more force than intended, the sound of metal clanging echoing in the open room. Jake raised his eyebrows in surprise, but Javy paid him no mind as he finished zipping his flight suit. “Good for you, man. Hope y’all have a great time.” 

He checked the blonde’s shoulder on his way out the door, ignoring the call of his name and the “what the fuck” that followed. 

When he walked into the briefing room a few minutes later, he stopped short of his seat. You were standing at the front of the room flipping through papers with Admiral Simpson. You glanced up once you handed the senior officer what he needed and met his eyes. Your face lit up and you waved happily. Javy wasn’t able to stop the tug at his lips, even if it was tinged with sadness. He raised his hand to wave back - you really did have the best smile. 

Then Jake entered the room behind him, and Javy had to wonder who it was you were directing it to to begin with. 

_______

Javy knew that he was staring. He couldn’t help himself, not when you looked that good. You were sitting at a table in the back of the bar, shamelessly drinking a glass of sparkling wine in a bar that usually only saw beer and whiskey. You wore one of those flowy skirts that fluttered around your calves, a graphic t-shirt tied in a knot above your belly button. Your hair was down and a little wild and your skin seemed to glow under the fluorescent lights. But it was your smile that really drew him in. It was blinding, radiant, and the most beautiful thing he thought he had ever seen. 

But it wasn’t aimed in his direction. 

No. Instead, you were smiling at his best friend. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   ��                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    He wanted to look away, to stop torturing himself like this, but he couldn’t. It had been a few weeks since you had come to California, and Javy hadn’t gotten used to the sight of Jake beside you. Here, in the cafeteria at work, even walking down the hallway a few times. It was a constant reminder that he had missed his shot. 

He knew he had no right to feel this way. After all, he had never made a move on you, never even hinted at his feelings. Jake had been the one to pursue you, and clearly, he had succeeded. Too bad that didn’t stop Javy’s mind from drifting to what could have been. He wondered what it would be like to be the one to make you smile like that, or the one who was allowed to wrap his arm around you and pull you close. He pictured himself leaning in to steal a kiss, to taste the Prosecco on your lips, to feel the warmth of your body against his or whisper something in your ear that made you shiver. 

He was drawn to you in a way that he couldn't explain, and he found himself wanting to stay there, watching. But then you threw your head back and laughed at something he couldn’t hear, and he knew he had to snap out of it. 

He downed the rest of his beer in one gulp and stood from the stool he had been perched on, not even bothering to say anything to the rest of his friends as he walked back to the bar. Maybe it was time to move on, to let go of this hopeless crush he’d been harboring and focus on finding something new. The best way to start that, he rationalized, was getting another drink. 

He put his order in with Penny, smiling kindly when she slid a fresh pint glass across to him. “Thanks, Penny. Put it on my tab?” 

“It’s already paid for,” she told him. 

“What?” 

She nodded behind him as she moved on to the next customer, and the wink she gave him seemed almost like she was in on something that Javy was entirely missing. He turned in the general direction of where she was indiciating, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. His eyes met yours almost immediately. You smiled at him brightly as you waved. Despite everything he had just said, that smile aimed in his direction sent his heart racing. 

Javy sighed when you started beckoning him over. He hesitated for a moment, unsure if he could handle being so close to you with how his thoughts were currently racing. He was surprised when he took note of Jake no longer being beside you, and a quick glance showed him walking in the direction of the dart board where Rooster and Fanboy were standing. It was the first time the blonde hadn’t been at your side when you were in the same vicinity since you had come into town, and he felt like a terrible friend when it made his decision a little bit easier. At the very least, he could thank you for the drink. 

He tried to keep his face neutral even as his heart rounded in his chest as he made his way over to your table. "Hey,” he said, forcing a smile and trying to sound casual.

“Hey, Javy,” you grinned, and you sounded genuinely happy to be speaking to him. You patted the seat beside him, telling him to sit. He did so after a moment of hesitation, and being so close to you immediately had him reeling.  “Where have you been hiding?”

“Hiding?”

“I’ve barely seen you since I ran into you here! It feels like you’re dodging me,” you laughed as you took a sip of your drink, and Javy felt his face heat. He hadn’t thought he was being obvious in how he was avoiding both you and his best friend as he worked through the emotions he was feeling. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve just been….busy.”

“Ah.” You didn’t look like you were buying it, and Javy didn’t blame you. It was a weak excuse, and he had to mentally slap himself for not coming up with something better than that. But you didn’t look mad, either. If anything, to his confusion, maybe the look you gave him was even a little amused. 

“Well, I hope you’re not too busy for a round of pool,” you said with a cheeky grin. “I’m itching to beat you.” 

Javy couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle at your tone. It was one of the things that had always drawn him to you. You were so happy and playful. Still, he glanced over at the dart board before looking back at you. He cleared his throat lightly. “Not darts?” 

“No,” you answered simply. 

“Teams, then?” He pushed. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was doing it to himself.

You shook your head and he swore you leaned just the slightest bit closer to him. “No teams. Just us. Are you up for the challenge?” 

He took a deep breath and thought it over for just a second. The smart thing would be declining and getting up and walking away to save his own feelings. But you were smiling so sweetly at him and from this close, he could smell your sweet perfume, and your skin looked so soft. He took a somewhat shaky breath and took a sip of the drink in his hand, before he let a smirk cross his face. 

“I don’t know. You might regret asking me to play against you.”

You laughed so prettily, your hair shaking around you when you threw your head back. 

“Is that a threat, Lieutenant Machado?” 

It felt so reminiscent of how the two of you used to talk to each other that Javy couldn’t help but lean into it. He shook his head with a smile. “No, just a warning.”

You laughed again and stood up, grabbing your drink and motioning for him to follow you. You sent him a wink that went right through him. “Well, let’s see if you can handle me.”

The words sent a shiver down his spine. He followed you to the pool table, his eyes locked onto your hips as they swayed in front of him, and he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have them pressed against him. He shook his head, trying to push those thoughts away and focus on the game at hand. You set your drink on the table and grabbed a cue stick, holding it out for him to take. 

“You break,” you said, your eyes daring him, but for what he wasn’t really sure. Javy took the stick from you, his fingers brushing yours briefly, sending a jolt of electricity up his arm and straight to his heart. 

He took a deep breath and stepped up to the table, positioning himself carefully before taking the shot. The balls scattered across the table, and Javy watched as the white ball sank a solid, followed quickly by a stripe. You clapped your hands together, a wide smile on your face. 

“Looks like we have a game on our hands,” you teased, leaning over the table to take your shot. Javy couldn't help but watch the way your body moved as you lined it up, sinking a solid easily in one of the corner pockets.

As the game went on, Javy's focus began to wane. He was too distracted by you, by the way you moved, the sound of your laughter, the warmth of your body when you brushed against him. He found himself wanting to touch you, to feel you closer, to know what it was like. He was getting lost in the way you moved, and how your eyes lit up when you made a particularly good move. 

For a while, he could pretend that he had a shot. 

“Victory!” 

Javy groaned as you yelled out your success once the final ball was sunk. You threw your arms up in triumph, a bright smile on your face as you turned to face him. He couldn’t help but smile at your excitement, even though he had just lost in a somewhat embarrassing fashion. 

“That did not go the way I anticipated.” 

You laughed at his disgruntlement, the sound ringing like music in his ears. “Thanks for playing with me,” you said, “I had fun.”

“Me too,” Javy replied, smiling softly. “Although I think you might have hustled me a little bit.”

You grinned, shaking your head. “I’m just good at pool.”

Javy chuckled. “You’re good at a lot of things.”

You drew your bottom lip between your teeth as you looked at him, not saying anything in response. He worried, for a moment, that he had said too much. Silence passed between the two of you. It was like there was something unspoken hanging in the air, something that both of you could sense but neither of you could quite put into words. He swallowed hard, trying to push the feeling aside. He didn't want to ruin the moment, not after how much fun he had just had with you. 

Finally, you took a deep breath, and he swore it sounded a little shaky. You grabbed your drink and took a sip, looking at him over the rim of the cup. “I’m glad we did this.” 

“Me too,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. 

But like a physical reminder that all good things have to come to an end, he caught a glimpse of Jake watching you from across the bar. There was a strange look in his best friend’s eye, something that looked almost like excitement, but Javy couldn’t quite decipher what it meant. Still, he could feel the weight of it settling in his stomach. 

He cleared his throat, setting his pool cue down to lean against the wall. This time, the smile he sent you was strained. “I should let you get back to Jake.”

To his surprise, a look of confusion crosses over the delicate features on your face. You glance behind you to where the blonde is before looking back at him, your eyebrows furrowed together. “What do you mean?”

He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the knot in his stomach. “I know you two have been…spending time together,” he said, and despite how hard he tried, the words tasted sour in his mouth. 

“I mean, yeah. But…wait.” 

Your pretty eyes widened and you shook your head, your hair shaking as a grin started spreading across your face. Javy felt more confused than he had all night, and for some reason, embarrassment was starting to settle in, too. 

“What?”

“Oh gosh. Javy. Me and Jake?”

“I…yes?” 

You broke out into a surprise bout of laughter, the sound like bells ringing in his ears. Your hand found his arm and you gave it a squeeze before letting it rest against his bare skin below where his shirt sleeve ended. Your hand felt so soft. He wanted you to keep touching him. "Oh, Javy. No. I thought Jake was kidding when he said that’s why you were probably dodging us left and right.” 

The pieces weren’t quite connecting as his mind fought to catch up, having gotten distracted by your touch. He floundered for what you were saying to make sense, but he came up short. “I…am so confused.” 

Your laughter peeled off into quiet giggles before quieting all together, and your face softened into something that looked understanding and hopeful at the same time. You took a step closer to him. His breath caught as his heart started to pound in his chest. 

“Jake and I are just friends, Javy. That’s all.” 

His pulse continued to race as hope set in. He played over every interaction that he had witnessed between the two of you over the last few weeks, realizing that maybe he had been a little blinded by the jealousy he had felt. He knew how Jake flirted and how he acted with women that he was into. Aside from that first night at the Hard Deck when he had introduced you, that intimacy had been absent. Instead, now that he thought about it, it had been a comfortable familiarity, not different from how they interacted with Nat or Halo or Rooster’s girlfriend.

He was starting to feel like an idiot. 

“Really?” 

“We have a lot in common. We talk about home a lot. But…I’m not into him. Someone else had already caught my eye.” 

He swallowed thickly, still not allowing himself to completely believe it. Your fingers still traced light circles on his arm. “Someone else?” 

You giggled softly, and then you raised on your toes and leaned in. There was a moment of hesitation, as if you were both waiting for the other to make a move, before you took it upon yourself to close the distance and your lips met his in a soft, tentative kiss. It was featherlight and over before his brain could even register it had happened. You were still smiling at him when you pulled away, your eyes glinting with amusement. You nodded slowly, whispering to him, “Someone else.” 

The words sent a jolt of electricity through him, his hand finding its way to the small of your back as he pressed his lips to yours again. Javy’s hands slipped around your waist, pulling you closer to him as the kiss intensified. It was like a spark had been ignited, and suddenly the kiss was deepening, becoming more passionate.

The rest of the bar seemed to fall away as you both lost yourselves in each other. Neither of you heard the excited yell of “finally” come from over at the dart board, completely caught up in the moment. Javy couldn’t believe that this was happening, that he was here with you, kissing you. Finally, indeed. 

Finally, the need for air became too much and the two of you pulled apart, gasping for breath. You looked up at him, your eyes filled with a warmth that made his heart skip a beat. 

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” you admitted, biting your lower lip between perfectly white teeth. Javy’s chest swelled with affection and he leaned in to kiss you again, this time with more certainty. He felt the warm pressure of your lips on his, and the sensation was intoxicating. 

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said once he pulled back. He had been wanting to do so for weeks, now, and it seemed it was his own fault that he hadn't, yet. 

You brushed your nose against his, nodding. “I’d like that.” 

--------------

Main Masterlist

Notes: I love this man so much. Hope you enjoyed this one as much as I enjoyed writing it!

[olderthannetfic]

This isn’t really closely related to fandom but eh. So the Somerton scandal going around—clearly what he did was wrong, he ripped off other creators and essentially stole revenue from them, etc. Terrible stuff, sounds like a terrible person.

But there’s this popular post going around about how OP is boggled that anyone could ever plagiarize because when they went to school their introduction to the concept was being warned that if they ever plagiarized their head would end up on a spike and it’s Very Bad Evil Terrible to ever plagiarize so they never even DREAMED of doing it.

And while I understand and agree that plagiarizing in order to profit is bad. Absolutely. Still—

Did y’all really never plagiarize in school because you were told it was bad? Really?? Plagiarization is one of those cheating tactics that’s actually very useful because you have to rephrase what you’re stealing in order to not get caught and rephrasing someone else’s ideas is an Excellent way to better understand them (and an excellent way to quickly do assignments when you’re struggling with a large workload). Obviously you shouldn’t do it for everything, but it’s not practical to do it for everything anyway because there are plenty of tests where plagiarization isn’t an option. And it’s not good to do it for actual published papers, yeah, but even not for essays? Especially in the lower grades?

Y’all really just…were told by a teacher not to do something and then never once even tried to do it? I thought this was the website where we all at least pretended to question authority!

--

Plagiarism is disgusting.

Anyone who would do it has a weak character.

So no, I have never once plagiarized or even been tempted.

It's not wrong because some petty authority told me it's naughty: it's wrong because it's intellectually dishonest and a person who will allow themselves to be intellectually dishonest once will do it again.

Doing it in high school won't generally hurt other people, but that was never the problem. Same with all other cheating in school. The fact that you would try to defend this is repulsive.

A cheater mindset is what leads to humans like Somerton who fundamentally do not value or grasp the point of actual creativity or integrity.

[iislak-mewu]

Īslak Mèwu intro post

Shishīkwa prana!¹ Welcome, travellers! I'll try and keep this post friendly and readable to non-linguists, I just wanna infodump about my language lol. This post has gotten a little long though, so apologies! Hopefully it serves well to give you a feel of it <3

¹/ɕiˈɕiə̯kʋa pʁaˈna/ PL~foreigner.PAT welcome

Consider this a formal introduction post to the conlang (constructed language) i've been making for like, over a year now at this point? on and off, mostly off tho lmao. The vast majority of stuff i've made is the grammar (this is very much my favourite area of langs lol, closely followed by the phonetics side of things), and as a result i really don't have many words or actual forms for things lol

Īslak Mèwu² (lit. valley's language) (or just Īsla for short) is a language spoken by the fictional Rūsawlitwā³ people. While the majority of them are a vertical transhumance culture, living in valleys and farming cattle (herders move the flock up and down the mountains in line with the seasons, while the majority of people live permenantly in the village), some groups have moved further afoot and are living in a more settled way in towns and cities in neighbouring regions.

²/iɐ̯ˈsla-k mɛˈʋu/ valley-GEN language (lit. "valley's language") ³/ʀuɐ̯-ˌsaʋli-ˈtˠaː/ cow-herd-AGN (lit. "cow-herders")

I'll start with Īsla's sounds, then give a (not-so-brief) tour of the grammar.

Phonology / sounds

Īsla has the following consonants: (If you don't recognise these symbols, you can find and listen to them here. You won't find ˠ in there, but it makes things sound more "dark".)

Īsla has eight short vowels, /i e ɛ a y ø u o/, along with the long vowels /iɐ̯, uɐ̯, iː, yː, uː, eː, aː/ and the rather distinctive syllabic fricatives /ʝ̩, ɣ̩ʷ, ɣ̩~ɦ̩/. These syllabic fricatives are high pitch, and often realised instead as breathy voiced vowels depending on dialect.

The syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C). Stress is assigned to the last "heaviest" syllable.

I am currently in the middle of reworking the past maybe 100 years of sound shifts, so this is subject to change (especially the vowel system)

Grammar

For the linguistics nerds among us, Īslak Mèwu is a synthetic language that features noun incorperation, a pretty free word order, 3 grammatical genders, split-S alignment, converbs, a shitty verb agreement system that will likely fall out of use in a generation or two (role marking is mostly done by the case system and emphatic pronouns), and TAM is typically marked via auxiliary verbs (tbf these are a lot more irregular so you do get decent verb agreement thru this). I'll explain these features briefly and how they work in Īsla:

Noun incorperation is a process where nouns and verbs are put together (compounded) into one word. We kinda have this in English - think about mountain-climbing, berry picking, horse riding, dishwashing, etc. In Īsla, this is MUCH more common than in English - this is used for basically every conventional activity. Natives talk about dinner-eating, sheet-changing, cow-chasing, dust-sweeping, fish-chopping, etc. These aren't always obvious from the words they're made of though! "whisky-swimming" actually means "to have thrown, to have deliberately lost a game", named for drinking games where people deliberately lose for the aim of getting drunk.

Grammatical gender. Like in French, German, etc. Īsla has 3 of them, and verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and determiners (think English "some", "most", "the", etc) "agree" with nouns in gender. Case markers merge with the gender markers.

Auxiliary verbs are little "helping" verbs that convey grammatical info alongside a more meaningful verb. English has these - "I will do X", "I should do X", "i have done X". Īsla verbs operate in basically the same way, but they come after the main verb, not before:

/niəsɛ sˠɣ̩mˈmuːs-a ɫʋin/ 3M.SG:ERG cook_dinner-NOMIN 3M.SG.IMP "He should cook dinner" /niəsɛ sˠɣ̩mˈmuːs-a tˠʋo/ 3M.SG:ERG cook_dinner-NOMIN 3M.LOC.COP "He is cooking dinner (for a while)" (lit. "He is in cooking dinner")

Case marking: Like in languages like German or Finnish. Little suffixes added to words to show what their role is in the sentence. In Īsla, the cases are the agentive case (do-ers), patientive case (things that have things done to them), genitive case (possessors), dative case (recipients of things, destinations, also used for expressing opinions as in "to me, X is cool"), the locative case (locations), and ablative case (sources and instruments).

Split-S alignment. ohhhhhh boy. this is FAR too complex of a topic to properly get into in an intro post like this, but the short of it that, Īsla just, can't make up its mind about what case to mark Ss with? For ease of writing, I'm gonna use "S" to refer to the only noun in an intransitive sentence (e.g. in "he walks", S is "he", but in "he hits him", there is no S, because this is a transitive sentence)

In Īsla, the main verb chooses what case the S should be in. There are two (main) categories of this:

"Unaccusative verbs" - S is marked with the "patientive" case (the case given to e.g. "person" in "i chase the person") /ˈtaːmu-∅ miɐ̯ˈlij/ person-PATIENTIVE lie "the person is lying down"

"Unergative verbs" - S is marked with the "agentive" case (the case given to e.g. "person" in "the person chases me") /ˈtaːmy jeˈiɐ̯s/ person:AGENTIVE walk "the person walks"

However, this case preference is overridden by most auxiliary verbs. For example /ʀom/, the inchoative auxiliary (="to begin Xing"), demands an agentive S: /ˈtaːmy ˈmiɐ̯lja ʀom/ person:AGENTIVE lie-NOMIN 3N.SG.INCH "the person starts lying down" /miɐ̯ˈlij/ "to be lying down" is typically unaccusative, but the presence of the inchoative auxiliary means that /taːmu/ is marked with the agentive case, rather than the patientive case as in the earlier example.

On the other end of that, /xe/, the past tense auxiliary, demands a patientive S: /ˈtaːmu jeˈiɐ̯s =xe/ person-PATIENTIVE walk =3N.SG.PAST "the person walked" This is the opposite thing - "walk" suggests an agentive S, but /xe/ overrides that.

The actual system is ofc more complicated than this, but this is enough for a quick overview.

I'm gonna stop talking here, before I make a post so long no one will want to read it, but there's absolutely more posts coming! …when i can fit them in between coursework and the adhd distractableness ofc. Hopefully this has given you a decent feel for the language, and please send asks about stuff if you're interested!! (i hope i've explained things ok) There's a lot I didn't touch on here, and a lotta detail I've left out, and I'd love an excuse to talk more about this stuff <3

[yannaryartside]

Sydney Adamu; Donna's antithesis

THE BIG PARALLEL: THE QUEEN OF THE KITCHEN

Donna's introduction to the audience is in her kitchen, where she is the leader, the center of the action; all orders come from her, and the dynamic in the family is created primarily by her. She has assigned (indirectly or so) the roles of all the family members that keep the family working in the way it does. She is the queen, the leader—a role she was given by nature.

And what is Sydney's job in the kitchen? The CDC, even when she was a sous, she was already taking the responsibilities of the CDC. She is their queen, their leader in their kitchen—a role she was given by choice.

The writers had given Sydney every opportunity to be Donna so they could show us how much of Donna she is not. Here are my favorite examples of it. 

Donna brings guilt, and Sydney brings grace.

Donna created her daughter's nickname after a mistake she made as a kid (probably when Nat was nervous and afraid to fail her), messing up a recipe.

Sydney gave grace to Tina when she messed up the recipe for the mashed potatoes. Sydney could have used that opportunity to get back at Tina for making her look bad in front of Carmy and all the other stuff. Sydney decided to be the bigger person; God, Sydney was not trying to make Tina own or like her. She just decided that is not what she is. She acknowledged that Tina was trying something new and wanted to be available in case Tina needed help. Sydney gave Tina clear expectations, recognized the task's difficulty, and offered help. Later, she was graceful when a mistake was made, and gave positive reinforcement when the job was well done. We learned then that Tinas was terribly afraid of being displaced or not good enough. Sydney is giving Tina all the things Donna should have given Nat.

Another exmaple of this is when Richie and Sydney are shopping for caulk. She just buys the right one; she doesn't rub it in his face or call him stupid or careless. In all their conversation, Sydney tried to understand more, not put more fire into the pile. Richie recognizes that, and I think this is when he starts to respect her, even a little.  

Donna brings chaos, Sydney brings order. 

Both women have the role of being the center (heart) of the kitchen. Only Donna can touch the food in her kitchen, while Sydney delegates the kitchen tasks to the restaurant employees.  

Donna gives the absence of self, and Sydney brings purpose. 

To please their mother, try to win her love, or just survive the household dynamics, the Berzatto siblings had to adopt behaviors/personalities that were not natural to them. Mickey was at least 18 when his father left; he took the provider position by helping her mom run the restaurant. He also took care of his siblings. He was his ultimate ally in helping the family feel like a family, particularly by always being capable of "dialing a room" to make everyone feel entertained, appreciated, have fun, and be a family. For all these reasons, he was Donna's favorite, and the other two siblings were neglected because of it. Neither Nat of Carmy felt really like she was there for them; she probably didn't encourage Carmy to draw or Nat in anything. Nat and Carmy grew up believing their talents/nature were useless because they didn't please their mom. Neither of them recognizes the things they are good at outside the kitchen: Nat diminishes her husband's compliments on her hard work, and Carmy ignores compliments on his drawings. 

Sydney, on the other hand, can encourage Marcus to follow his passion for baking. She supports Tina in her culinary journey to the point of her becoming the third person in charge. She asked Nat to be the project manager because, in the few interactions she had with her, she perceived (or it was intuition) Nat's attention to detail, caring nature, and responsibility. In the climax of the second season, she trusts Richie to do the calling of the orders when she has no reason to believe he can, and he solidifies his purpose. Sydney "nurtured" everybody's natural talents and trusted them to walk independently. That is what a good parent or leader does. It is such a brilliant subtext. Important to note she doesn't do that with Carmy, because Carmy is her equal, her partner-to-be.

Other ones:

There is also to mention the fact that Sydney was a professional driver, and Donna tried to crash a car in her own house. Talking about metaphors. 

Also, Sydney doesn't indulge in any of the toxic behaviors that the Berzattos learned from Donna, neither Carmy nor Richie's bullshit nor the rest of the staff. Little by little, she fought fire with water, and she won, maybe because she is more like a river than a drop. She had a purpose on her own, an identity, a past that she kept to herself, and a desire to move forward. People started to respect her the more they relied on her and the more she didn't give in to the toxic traits that were ruling them before. They saw the good and followed it.

Sydney may not rely on toxic dynamics to lead her kitchen, but she will not let others take advantage of her. She did not pick on Carmy's slack last season for him but despite him. She doesn't believe that is what she is supposed to do, not only as her employee but friend and possible romantic interest. She calls the bad behaviors/tendencies by it's name. And communicates she won't have it, while also saying she belives in him.

I think most of the audience (besides the ones in this fandom) really doesn't understand how extraordinary Sydney is. If she wasn't as well-written as she is, with defects and fears, people would think that she is the "saint woman/magic woman" archetype, making everything previously broken work in her presence. I also think it is because she is a woman, and women are expected to bring magic and be fixers and helpers. There is also the fact that she is a black woman, and everything that comes with that, but I cannot comment on that, so I am not going to. Just saying she is one of the most amazing role models I have seen, decorated with the price of also being one of the most complex female characters on screen. She is not perfect as a person and has not reached her whole potential, and she wants it. I respect and admire her so much. Even when Carmy seems to have a longer path of healing ahead, I want Sydney to win the most, not just heal. I want to know more about her, her intimate desires, and why is her heart broken. Long gone are the days when women lived on screen to make everybody around them better and happier. All the things she is extraordinary for, the ones I talked about, are not just reasons why Carmy had admired her or fallen for her. She is, for me, a champion preparing for live-defining battles. We know who she is, and we get to discover what else she could be, to grow in her self-confidence, her purpose, and what brings pleasure to her soul. She is considered now the show's co-protagonist.

And I hope in s3 we are in for a journey. She made all the difference. Thank you for reading.

[stormyrainyday]

How to Read MFB Like a Professor: Introduction

One of the assigned readings in the AP literature class in my high school was Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor; I'd read a chapter of it for 10th grade English, and for a novice analyst it opened my eyes to a new way to read the book we were reading at the time (Fahrenheit 451 if you're curious). Unfortunately though, due to scheduling reasons, I didn't take the class in which HTRLLAP was read.

Lately, though, I've been dipping my toes back into media analysis for fun in my free time, and I ordered the book in hopes of getting similar insight as I did in that earlier English course. The thing about HTRLLAP is that it doesn't tell you necessarily how to interpret a scene; rather, it provides knowledge of common symbolism and where it is usually used, and encourages you to further analyze with that knowledge in your arsenal. For example, the introduction of the book suggests that, in literature, any trade or deal could be analyzed with the perspective of a "deal with the devil". Of course, not every book will have a devil, but that's not the point. The point is to pay closer attention to the items up for barter, and what those items could represent to each character. In the book's given example from A Raisin in the Sun, the item for sale is the family home, a symbol of the main character's pride, history, and soul. That is not what every trade deal in a story would represent; however, it teaches you that when something is being traded, to look closer at what the components mean to each character and how they fit into the overarching themes of the story.

All that being said, reading a book on how to read analysis may teach me the theory, but if I want to hone my own skills, I need to put them into practice. Which brings me to this post-series, How to Read Metal Fight Beyblade Like a Professor. I've decided that for each chapter of HTRLLAP, I'll do a short analysis of the relevant symbolism in MFB. Hopefully by the end of it, I'll be a little better at analyzing media.

(Most of the posts will be related to Metal Fusion. It's my favorite season, I'm the most familiar with it, and the characters that I like the most appear in this season. I also find the plot to be the most grounded of all the series. It is, at the end of the day, about Gingka growing strong enough to get L Drago back-- most of the arcs serve that narrative. While I like Masters, I feel the focus of the season shifts quite dramatically when the Hades plotline is introduces, and I don't remember enough of Fury to speak much on it.)

Each post will be titled similarly to this one, and will reference the chapters of HTRLLAP. Post 1 will be chapter one, and titled How to Read MFB Like a Professor: Chapter 1, with the subtitle Every Trip is a Quest (Except When It's Not) to coincide with the chapter subheading. I'll be tagging the posts HTRMFBLAP and linking chapters at the end of each post. Expect varying lengths for the posts, as well as inconsistent times between them. I am not a literature students and I am really just doing this for love of the game, but that means that a lot of the time life will get in the way.

Quite frankly if anyone reads any of the analysis, I'll be elated. I love MFB and I love analysis and I've been filled with indescribable excitement at the thought of doing this.

[honor-cxde]

Dreadwing and the Wreckers

// a rambling by yours truly.

So we know that in Dreadwing's introduction episode ("Loose Cannons"), Wheeljack and Seaspray were Wreckers set to rendezvous in order to try and regroup after the unit splintered. We also know that Dreadwing intercepted their comms, beat Wheeljack there, and set up a proximity bomb to try and eliminate them both. Now, Jackie never had any radio contact with Dreads, but he recognized the bomb the second he saw it and knew who it belonged to.

So, they had met.

Fast forward to the Jackhammer shooting the Sky Claw down on earth. The whole episode ends with the Autobots in a port somewhere, trying to save Bulkhead from the bomb Dreadwing planted on him.

But, wait. How did we get there?

I think our favorite blue and gold Seeker has a deeper relationship with the Wreckers than what was let on.

He knew who Wheeljack and Seaspray were by name. At LEAST he knew Jackie on sight -- after being shot down and subsequently escaping, Dreadwing calls Jackie, on the Jackhammer's frequency, by name, to challenge him.

Wheeljack and Bulkhead both respond. Because Wreckers don't call for backup, they call for cleanup.

They go, and split up. Wheeljack confronts Dreads head on while Bulk, unbeknownst to the viewers, has circled around the back. The Seeker seems to have second thought and runs, ending up in a dead end.

This is one of the things I like about Dreadwing: he's a planner. And he is, tactically, extremely good at it. He failed at every assignment in the show, it is true, but his methods were VERY clearly well-thought out and planned.

In this particular case, he set up his bombs before they ever even got there. He knew where he wanted Wheeljack to end up, and how to get him there, but here's the kicker:

He knew Bulkhead would show up. And that was more important to his end goal.

Dreadwing had a bomb set high, on its own, near the ledge above where Bulkhead ended up standing, thinking they had the 'Con surrounded. There's no reason for Dreads to do this unless he knew without a doubt Bulk would be there (remember earlier in the episode, when the gas station blew and our Seeker made his getaway, Bulk was there. Dreadwing saw him, and knew who he was.)

So he knew that Jackie would come at him from the front, and Bulkhead would sneak behind, and he planned for it. His ultimate goal wasn't to destroy the two of them, though -- he wanted Optimus, and as many of Team Prime as he could get in one location to try and eliminate them all in revenge for Skyquake's death.

So he buried the two Wreckers, dug Bulkhead out, and drug his ass to the port, where he set up his second trap. He knew WHO Wheeljack and Bulkhead were and could plan based on what he obviously knew about how the Wrecker unit worked.

So I don't think Seaspray was Dreadwing's first Wrecker kill. Not by a long shot. I think he was the hyena that skulked in the shadows, nipping at their heels. But he didn't come at them all willy-nilly, he knew he'd get obliterated if he did, so he was a patient predator. Much like a lion, he went after them when they had split up, only targeting one, maybe two, at a time.

I think this bastard has more than the average kill count and a chunk of them were Wreckers.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[btr-rewatch]

Big Time Rush Season 2, Episode 1: “Welcome Back, Big Time"

BTR is back! And so am I! (after my very long hiatus)

Highlights: The band returns from tour and immediately starts having a very bad time for various reasons. Plus, the introduction of a new (beloved) character.

Last we left off, the guys were about to embark on their first ever tour. We pick up this episode just as the tour is wrapping up and the group makes their triumphant return to the Palm Woods. Unfortunately, they receive a less than enthusiastic welcome.

Add in some Solo cups to the scene, and you basically get this meme

Bitters informs them that there's a new crop of Palm Woods residents—bright eyed and full to the brim with dreams of stardom.

The guys then learn a few other interesting pieces of news. They've got one day to complete 3 weeks' worth of missed school assignments, AND it appears that Jo has found a new boyfriend.

Kendall handles it very well.

We then move into apartment 2J, where 3 different plotlines quickly emerge. James and Carlos want to focus on rebuilding their Palm Woods cred, Logan's priority is the mountain of schoolwork due the next day, and Kendall has become incapacitated by Jo's betrayal.

Mama Knight mentions that she's always liked Jo, and it's not like her to do something like this. She suggests Kendall go and speak with her about it. And, if it does turn out she's cheating, she "always hated her." What a supportive mother.

ALSO! I would be remiss if I didn't focus momentarily on her line, "If you wanna be in a relationship with someone, trust is number one," given the fact that Mr. Knight (according to both fan headcanons and Challen's own comments on the family's situation) had an affair and abandoned the family. I just. I'm sure this is contributing to Kendall's reaction being to fall into complete despair before even thinking to speak to Jo about what's going on.

After spying on and then confronting Jo, Kendall learns she was just studying for a new role with her co-star. Which brings me to...

JETT!! It's Jett Stetson!! I loved this guy; he's sooo ridiculous.

Kendall decides there's no need to feel threatened because he trusts Jo. Kind of. Sort of. Bitters doesn't help by commenting that Jett is way better looking than Kendall is (a sentiment Katie also shares).

Kendall's been home for an hour, and he's already dealt with the stress of potentially being cheated on and has had his looks criticised by both his little sister and the building's manager. He's having a rough day.

Meanwhile, James and Carlos are sitting poolside, trying desperately to regain their status as Kings of the Palm Woods.

Pathetic dorks.

Also, shout-out to James's haircut. It looks so much better this season.

Let's check in on Logan. He and Kelly arrive at the Palm Woods school to complain that there's no way all that work can be done by tomorrow. Ms. Collins claims she was in communication with someone who assured her that all the school stuff was being taken care of. That person was Gustavo, who purposely didn't tell the guys about school because he didn't want them to stress. Besides, he says, there's plenty of time for school now that the tour is over!

Oh.

Yeah, so the guys are performing in Rocktoberfest. Griffin used poison somewhere along the line to get it set up.

Logan has one day to complete all the work.

Over in the James and Carlos plot, the Jennifers try to teach them to be cruel in order to retake their spot in the Palm Woods, but the boys are big ol' softies and can't do it.

Kendall is continuing to have a similarly disappointing day. As he's doing research on Jett, Katie comes by with some bad news. Not only do Jo and Jett kiss in their new show, they do so for FIVE pages. Here is my favorite part from that script.

Here's what it says in case the pic is blurry.

Drake pauses for a moment and almost stops, but he continues to kiss her. He mumbles inside the kiss. DRAKE: Ri, rumve myou. Rachel's eyes open in delight. RACHEL: Ri, rumve myou, roo.

Back to the homework plot! These episodes with multiple plotlines are exhausting to write about 😆

Kelly and Gustavo have helped purchase pre-made projects to submit. They also hired some nerds to do the math work.

I want to see the scenes with the nerds. They look delightful. I especially like how the guy on the right has a second pair of glasses in his pocket.

After being caught by Ms. Collins, Gustavo tries to bribe her with Rocktober tickets. She is not impressed.

Have fun doing three weeks' worth of work for four people, Logie!

Kendall accompanies Jo to the "New Town High" filming and is very mature about the kissing scene.

His delivery of "This isn't root beer!" still gets me after all these years

Over in 2J, Logan is trying to prove watermelons can't make toast.

He's doing a really great job at it.

Back to Kendall! And we'll make it quick. He's all set in the Palm Woods lobby with flowers to apologize to Jo for being a giant doofus. After assuring her that he totally trusts her, he then sees a suspicious text message from Jett on her phone and goes straight back to losing his mind. Jo, understandably, is at her wits' end and basically tells him they're done.

Girl, good for you. Kendall is losing his marbles.

But also. No one is actually helping him to work through this?? Which, like, is because it's a show for kids/teens, but (as always) let's ignore that entirely. Let's be realistic about this for a moment. There is no way Kendall does not have trauma from his father's affair and subsequent abandonment of the family. Now, he's faced with a situation where he genuinely thinks his first-ever love is cheating on him. And all he's gotten is a ten-second pep-talk from his mother, and multiple reminders that he shouldn't trust Jo and that Jett is better looking than him.

So maybe Kendall gets a little bit of a pass for being off his rocker currently.

James and Carlos attempt to cheer him up with the promise of their upcoming party and a new girlfriend. Except nobody cares about their party, and they get their supplies taken from them by the cast of NCSI. They return to 2J dejected and absolutely miserable.

They're promptly grabbed by Logan, who is seemingly near death from like...just a handful of hours of schoolwork. As he's hacking up a lung, he orders the rest of the guys to contribute just a tiny bit to the projects, just so he can put their names on it.

An extremely sad Kendall is tasked with pouring bleach on a plant.

Also, James and Carlos have worn five different outfits in the single day this episode takes place in.

Mama Knight is going to have a lot of laundry to do.

Cut to the next day. Ms. Collins goes over the boys' projects, they all get passing grades, and Rocktoberfest is saved (hooray!). Their popularity is also restored nearly immediately as the other residents find out that BTR is one of the bands performing.

As everyone celebrates, Kendall hangs back to call Jo and apologize for being such a silly, goofy, jealous guy. He also tells her he's going to leave her tickets to the show, though he isn't sure she'll come.

But, of course, it ends on a sweet note.

And that's a wrap on season 2, episode 1! It only took me 9 months to get to :)

This episode is a memorable one for me. I was hyped for season 2 when it came out, and I LOVED "Til I Forget About You." There was a bit too much happening in this one, though. Lots of changing scenes every two seconds.

I know this season is ridiculously long, so I'm a little intimidated by that, but looking forward to it as well. When I was younger, there were a handful of my favorite episodes I'd turn to when I watched the show, and there were others I'd skip or just not see as often. It'll be fun to revisit some of those episodes that aren't as ingrained in my brain.

Kendall pep talks: None. He was too sad :(

[where-dreamers-go]

“Introductions” rk800 Connor x Reader

(A/N: Meeting Connor for the first time. Reader is an investigative assistant. This one’s a little short. Warnings: Language and canon violence (one punch). Use of (Y/F/N) for your first name. Word Count: 738 words)

Days could be exceedingly repetitive. Other days were only the same by slim comparisons. The work day ahead of you would likely change all of that by a sizable percentage.

Not that you knew that in the moment.

Walking out of the restroom, close to the break room, you heard the tell tale voice of Detective Reed. He didn’t sound too enthused. Nothing new there.

Before taking notice of anything else, you saw ‘ANDROID’ on the back of a dark jacket. An intriguing sight for the break room and unfortunate given a certain detective’s presence.

Oh, no, you thought as your feet took you closer. A wall blocked the scene’s entirety, but you could hear plenty.

“. . . is that it?” Detective Reed asked sourly.

You reached a vacant space behind the concrete wall, hearing his voice clearly.

“Hey, bring me a coffee, dipshit.”

Quietly, you took one step into the break room.

Reed was standing uncomfortably close to the dark-haired android and looking smug if not a little peeved.

The newcomer did not turn to retrieve any coffee.

“GET A MOVE ON!”

Rigid, you watched on. Something in you needed to know how this turned out, to get a better read of everyone in the room.

Neither individual moved in their standoff.

“I’m sorry, but I only take orders from Lieutenant Anderson.” The android replied.

“Oh… Oh…” Detective Reed turned sarcastically to his companion at a small table who was watching.

The android had been looking to the silent detective as well until Reed sucker punched the android’s middle. Without a word, the android dropped down to one knee. Stiff and giving no other reaction.

Their backs were to you completely.

“When a human gives you an order, you obey.” Reed pointed at the downed figure before leaning forward. “Got it?” He crouched even further to be eye level. “Stay outta my way… Next time you won’t get off so easy.”

Reed pushed the android’s forehead before leaving him hunched over, close to the floor. Even walking off with the other detective a few paces behind, Reed stared harshly at the android.

Hater, you thought, ignoring the widescreen television hung on the wall set to a news channel. Poor thing.

In front of you, the figure pushed themselves up in one straight movement before rolling the shoulder joints.

Oh. You rushed over.

“Are you okay?” You asked in a hushed tone, coming up beside the android’s left side.

“I do not have any damage. All of my systems are operational.” The brown-eyed android said. After adjusting his tie, he turned to you fully. The LED on his temple spun for a couple of moments before settling to a steady blue.

“So…you are okay?”

“I am.” He gave a half smile, encouragingly. “My name is Connor. I am the android sent by Cyberlife.”

“Hi… My name is (Y/F/N). I am a human….who had enough motivation to go to work today.” You paused with a small smile. “I’m an investigative assistant.”

“Perhaps we will both be assigned to the same case. Lieutenant Anderson and I are assigned to any case involving androids.”

“Hank Anderson?” You lowered your voice as you asked.

“Yes. Have you worked with him?” His eyes seemed to brighten.

“Yeah. This should be interesting.”

Connor tilted his head.

Cute. Well at least he’s not teamed with Reed. That’d be a disaster and a half.

Clearing your throat, you clasped your hands together.

“Uh… Not all humans are like Reed, but if he bothers you again… Please let me know.”

“I can handle myself, but I will keep that in mind.”

I hope so. You thought and took a step to the side.

“Good. Uh. I guess I’ll see you around, Connor. I hope your day goes by more smoothly.”

“Thank you.” He gave a slight inclination of his head. “I look forward to working with you if we are assigned on the same case or in passing.”

Smiling in kind, you gave a small wave and left the break room to return to your business.

Whether the android’s words were merely professional or friendly, you had a good feeling about your new acquaintance. You harbored no ill feelings towards androids. Perhaps that was a weakness, perhaps not.

But why would they have an android put on android cases? Hmm.

There would be plenty of time to ponder that question and many more.

~~~

(If you love my writings and want to support me, I have a Ko-Fi where you can buy me a coffee. I would be eternally grateful. coffee

Best wishes and happy reading.)

~~~~~

DreamerDragon Tags: @cubedtriangle

Detroit Become Human Tags: @shewhobreathesfire @

**Let me know if you would like to be tagged in insert readers, either through replies, ask, or message.**

[mathematical-cheese]

Why Straws Have One Hole: An Introduction to Homology Part 2

In this post I'll discuss simplicial complexes and how we can use them to make our test for holes simpler and motivate the definitions for simplicial homology! The post is more technical but I have tried to motivate each step.

Simplicial Complexes:

A common theme in topology is to build up our spaces from smaller, simpler spaces. One way of doing this is to use simplices! These are generalisations of triangles to all dimensions:

Image is taken from here

An n-simplex has n+1 verticies and is denoted by its vertices in square brackets: <e₀,...,eₙ>. A simplicial complex is made by gluing simplices together such that the intersection of two simplices is also a simplex that is included in the complex. We also require that any n vertices can define at most one n-simplex in the complex. If some vertices e₀,...,eₙ in a simplicial complex, K, define an n-simplex <e₀,...,eₙ> that is in K, we call <e₀,...,eₙ> an n-face of K.

An example of a simplicial complex is a square where each vertex of the square is a 0 simplex and each edge is a 1-simplex. If instead we considered a solid square, we wouldn't automatically get a simplicial complex because the 2 dimensional part isn't made up of 2-simplices. We fix this by adding an addition 1-simplex bewteen one pair of diagonal points which gives us a simplical complex with four vertices, five 1-simplices and two 2-simplices:

We can construct a great number of spaces using simplices! This construction is only up to homeomorphism but that's all we care about! A simplicial complex that is homeomorphic to a space is called a triangulation of that space. Importantly we can triangulate a straw:

This is the simplest triangulation because having fewer simplices would lead to us having different simplices described by the same vertices.

Simplicial Homology

So why do we care about triangulations? The key here is to notice that the boundary of an n-simplex is a simplicial complex made up of (n-1)-simplices. For example, the boundary of a 2-simplex is a simplicial complex made of three 1-simplices. The idea is to modify our test to only involve simplices because then we only have to check finitely many things! This is where things start to get a bit more technical but I will try my best to motivate each step!

Firstly, we need to introduce a convention in the way we describe simplices. We pick an order for the vertices in our complex to be listed, e.g. for the triangulation of the straw we could pick the order a,b,c,d,e,f. Then any time we write a simplex we must list the vertices in that order. For example, with the order above, <a,b,d> is how we describe the left most 2-simplex. The reason we need this is we are about to start thinking about simplices in a more abstract way and we need a systematic way of writing them.

Now for arguably the weirdest (but most powerful) step. We want a way to talk about the boundary of a simlicial complex as one object and we want a way to say when a particular simplicial complex has no boundary. The motivation for this is we want to talk find the analogue of a loop that we can use to test for holes, that is we want a one dimensional object that doesn't have a boundary. Since we eventually want to count things, it might be prudent to somehow assign numbers to things. As mentioned above, the boundary of an n-simplex can be thought of as the union of (n-1)-simplices and unions of sets are kind of similar to a kind of sum. The idea is to talk about "sums" of simplices. It doesn't really make sense to add simplices but we can sort of just fudge it. This fudging is known as "formal sums" and this is when we say "okay, we don't know what a sum of these things actually is but we study it anyway".

We say the elements of X generate these formal sums.

We then consider the set Cₙ(K) of all the formal sums of n-simplices in a simplicial complex K and we call it the nth simplicial chain group of K and we call elements of Cₙ(K) n-chains. We say that the rank of Cₙ(K) is the number of elements of X. Note that the sum or difference of two chains is again a chain.

The rank of C₂(K) is 1 and the rank of C₁(K) and of C₀(K) is 3.

We can now also give meaning to a simplex that is written in a different order to our chosen order. Given an ordered list of vertices, we can swap two elements around to get a different ordered list. If n is the number of swaps it takes to get an ordered list of vertices into our chosen order, we say that the simplex with vertices written in a different order is equal to the element of Cₙ(K) given by (-1)ⁿ times the simplex with the vertices written in our chosen order.

Now we want to figure out how to represent the boundary as a map from Cₙ(K) to Cₙ₋₁(K) since the boundary of an n-simplex is made up of (n-1)-simplices.

The full representation of this map is a bit detailed so I will stick to the case when n is less than or equal to 2 since that's all we need. The definition of this boundary map only depends on what it does to the simplices because it comes from considering their boundaries. So we will say that the boundary map applied to a formal sum is just the formal sum of the map applied to each simplex, for example

where ∂ is denotes the boundary map. So we just need to define ∂ on simplices.

To motivate the definition, we consider a 2-simplex <x,y,z> with the order x,y,z. Starting at x, we can think of the boundary as a loop that goes from x to y, then from y to z then from z back to x:

So we could represent the boundary as the formal sum <x,y>+<y,z>+<z,x>. Then written in our chosen order, the boundary is <x,y>+<y,z>-<x,z>. That is ∂(<x,y,z>)=<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>. In the first term, we remove the first vertex, in the second term we remove the second vertex and multiply by -1, and in the third term we remove the third vertex and multiply by -1 twice. So it would seem sensible to that the pattern here is the nth term in the boundary of a k-simplex is the simplex where the nth vertex is removed and we mutlipy by (-1)ⁿ⁻¹.

So the boundary of a 1-simplex <x,y> is <y>-<x>. But the boundary of a 0-simplex is always 0 since 0-simplices are just points and have no boundary!

We also have that the boundary of the boundary of a 2-simplex is 0. This makes intuitive sense since the boundary itself has no points at the edge of it but we can show this still works in our abstraction to formal sums:

Now we have two special types of formal sums: those that have no boundary and those that are the boundary of something else. We call an n-chain that has no boundary an n-cycle and we call an n-chain that is the boundary of an (n+1)-chain an n-boundary. We can extend the first above argument to show that boundaries are always cycles, i.e. the boundary of a boundary is always 0. 1-cycles are what replace loops in our earlier test, that is we want to find 1-cycles that aren't 1-boundaries! An obvious yet important example of a boundary is 0, 0 is the boundary of 0 (we'll use this fact later). Two other important facts are the sum of n-cycles is also an n-cycle and the sum of n-boundaries is also an n-boundary. If c and c' are both cycles, then ∂(c+c')=∂c+∂c'=0+0=0 and if c=∂b anf c'=∂b', then c+c'=∂b+∂b'=∂(b+b').

Let's take a step back to summarise what we have so far. We have found a test for holes in a space but it didn't really allow for easy calculation of the number of holes in a space. So we restricted our view to simple spaces and have found a way of abstractly representing the building blocks of those spaces. This abstraction has allowed us to reframe our test for holes into a purely algebraic question!

But how can we be sure this test still works? Let's consider a circle. Using our first test, we can just take a loop around the circle. Then this loops isn't the boundary of anything since it bounds a disc of the same radius but this disc isn't part of the circle. So the circle has a hole. Now we triangulate the circle using three vertices and 3 edges, i.e. a triangle. If we label the vertices as <x>, <y> and <z> we already know an example of a cycle: <y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>. Even though this calculation was done for a 2-simplex, it only involves the 1-simplices so it is valid in this situation too! But in this case, we don't have any 2-simplices in our space so this cycle can't be the boundary of anything! Conversely, suppose we get a positive result using our simplicial hole test, i.e. we've found a cycle that isn't the boundary of anything. Then we can construct a loop in the space using this cycle and this loop wouldn't be the boundary of anything so the first test would also be positive!

The final step that actually lets us count things is to define the homology groups! What we want to do is find cycles that aren't boundaries. Algebraically, we do this by considering cycles to be "the same" if their difference is a boundary. That is, we say two n-cycles c and c' are homologous if there is some (n+1)-chain b such that c-c'=∂b. We have that all n-boundaries are homologous to each other. Say both c and c' are n-boundaries and that b and b' are (n+1)-chains such that c=∂b and c'=∂b', then c-c'=∂b-∂b'=∂(b-b'). The since b and b' are (n+1)-chains, b-b' is an (n+1)-chain so c and c' are indeed homologous. In particular, 0 is a boundary so every boundary is homologous to 0. So now suppose that c is a cycle that is homologous to 0, then there exists an (n+1)-chain b such that c-0=∂b. So c=∂b and hence c is also an n-boundary. This means that a cycle is a boundary if and only if it is homologous to 0. So now if we want to find cycles which aren't boundaries, we look for cycles which aren't homologous to 0.

We define the homology class of a cycle c to be the set of all the cycles which are homologous to c and we denote it [c]. For example, the homology class of 0, [0], is the set of all boundaries! We can also define a notion of addition of homology classes: [c]+[c']=[c+c']. That is, the sum of two homology classes of two cycles is the homology class of their sum. We call the set of all homology classes of a cycles of a simplicial complex K, the (first) homology group of K and write H₁(K). If H₁(K) only has one element, i.e. H₁(K)={[0]} every cycle must be a boundary and K would have no holes. But if K has a hole, H₁(K) would have more than one element.

We are actually now quite close to being able to count the number of holes a space has! Let's come back to the example of a circle. Intuitively, a circle has 1 hole and we've already seen that we have one cycle which isn't a boundary: <y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>. But by the way we defined the boundary, we also have that

for any integer n. So for any non-zero integer n, we can find a cycle that is not a boundary. In particular, if m doesn't equal n, then n(<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>) is not homologous to m(<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>) since their difference is (n-m)(<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>) which is not a boundary unless n-m=0, which is not the case here since n doesn't equal m. Moreover, I claim that any cycle in a circle must be of this form. Remember, this cycle represents the loop going around the triangulation of the circle once. The only way we can get loops in the circle are obtained by going around the circle a whole number of times (where going in the opposite direction gives us a "negative" loop). Any other path you try to take will end up with not having the same start and end point and so would have a boundary! So there is a homology class of the circle for each integer. Moreover, adding these cycles represents going around a loop n+m times so adding the homology classes together is somehow the same as the regular addition we know for the integers! In formal terms, we say that H₁(circle) is isomorphic to the integers. Like how homeomorphism is the notion of "the same" for topologists, isomorphism is the notion of "the same" for algebrists! The important part of this is that all of the homology classes can be expressed as an integer multiple of [<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>] just like how an integer can be thought of as an integer multiple of the number 1. In this sense, we say that [<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>] generates H₁(circle), i.e. H₁(circle) has 1 generator. This cycle came about as a loop around the hole in the circle so it is sensible to guess that the number of generators corresponds to the number of holes!* This is how we will go about showing that a straw has 1 hole in the next part! That is, we shall figure out what the first homology group of a straw is and find out how many generators it has!

*technically, we actually count the free generators of H₁ since the torsion elements represent something else but it won't matter for what we're doing. Alternatively, we could have defined homology over a field to get vector spaces which naturally don't have any torsion but this doesn't feel quite as natural as doing homology with integral coefficients.

[isle-of-the-gorgons]

Beware The Gorgons Of Hatchetfield!

Welcome to the mysterious and magical land of Hatchetfield, where fantastical creatures coexist with humans, even if not harmoniously.

This is an ask blog for a Nerdy Prudes Must Die Gorgon AU. Before anything else, lets dive into the main characters.

The Gorgons

Stephanie Lauter - Transfemme, bisexual, demigod queen. After disobeying her Godly Father during his trails to make her powerful he curses her to be a gorgon. Her snakes are Brazilian Rainbow Boas.

Ruth Fleming - Transfemme bisexual. Her parents had disrespected a god who cursed their unborn child, after being born a gorgon they abandoned her and she was raised by satyrs. She was all alone until she found Steph and Grace. Her snakes are Axanthic conda morph Hognoses.

Grace Chasity - Cis, lesbian. She was a priestess to a virgin goddess and while trying to figure out her sexuality she lost her virginity to a man inside the goddesses temple, getting her cursed as a gorgon and banished. Her snakes are Diamondback Rattlesnakes.

Richard Lipschitz - Transmasc and aroace. He was being forced into a marriage he didn't want and he begged for the gods to save him, one of them took pity on the boy and "cursed" him as a gorgon, being the only gorgon of the group who was happy about the situation. His snakes are Blue Eyed Leucistic Ball Pythons.

The Humans

Maxwell Jägerman - Cis, pansexual, demigod. While making his name as a hero he was tasked by Ruth's parents to kill their wicked monster of a son, but when he arrived all he found was a beautiful woman.

Peter Spankoffski - Transmasc and bisexual. Pete was ordered to get snake venom from a gorgon in order to save his brother Ted from being wrongfully imprisoned, only to meet and fall in love with Steph.

THE SHIP PAIRINGS ARE LAUTSKI, MAX+RUTH+GRACE, AND RICHIE IS AROACE UNINTERESTED IN DATING.

Click here for the Master List of posts

And with that out of the way, here are the mod introductions!

Mod Muse 🍓

Hiya! Mod Muse here, but you can just call me Muse! Pronouns are she/her! I'm a writer and the creator of this au! You can also find me at my side blog @hatchetfield-omegaverse ! Feel free to shoot me a message any time about the characters, hcs, general lore, fic ideas, or just to send love! I hope you like this au!

Mod Prophet 🐍

Heyo! You can call me Mod Prophet, Prophet, or Snake! My pronouns are They/It/He and im a writer, I'm also the resident Snake expert who assigned the gorgons their snakes. I'm hellenic so I'm mostly here to help make sure this au is respectful to my religion while still taking elements from greek mythology. Please feel free to direct asks at me if you have questions about the snakes themselves or anything related to the mythology and culture of this AU

Tag System

#NPMD Gorgon AU - General posts

#Mod🍓 - Posts done by Mod Muse

#Mod🐍 - Posts done by Mod Prophet

#LoreAsks - Asks about the lore surrounding gorgons, mythology, or world building

#HcAsks - Asks talking about personal headcanons

#GeneralAsks - Asks about basically anything

#CharacterAsks - Asks that are responded to in character

#GeneralLore - Posts about lore that wasnt sent in asks

#TheFics - Anytime parts of the fic are posted

#Safe - Posts that are sfw

#NotSafe - Posts that are nsfw so you can block it if you'd like

The only real DNI we have is NO MINORS! This AU isnt exclusively NSFW but there are a lot of nsfw elements and we do not want minors engaging in that! If we see a minor interacting with us we will block them! If you see a minor interacting feel free to send us an ask to let us know so we can purge any minors following/reposting from us!

LOOK BELOW THE CUT FOR PHOTOS OF EACH OF THE GORGONS SNAKES

Stephanie Lauter

Ruth Fleming

Grace Chasity

Richard Lipschitz

[vickyvicarious]

Who's Read What in Dracula? Masterpost

This is a little self-assigned project to try and keep track of who has read (as well as written) what documents, and, importantly, when they do so. Last year I spent some time thinking about this and it informed some of my thoughts about specific characters' perspectives and actions in interesting ways. So I thought it could be a neat resource to have for others!

I'm going to update this in time with the novel, so there won't be any spoilers. This post is going to be a master reference, with links to each individual character's posts. I originally wanted to do this as a series of graphs for each character, with color-coded bars for each document they've read, but I'm not savvy enough to figure out a non-confusing way to do so, especially given the number of different authors/documents. Instead, I'm going to have a separate post for each character, and just have the info in written form there. Here are the links to each of those, in order of introduction:

Jonathan Harker

Mina Murray

Lucy Westenra

Jack Seward

Quincey Morris

Arthur Holmwood

Abraham Van Helsing

Some housekeeping notes: Obviously, each character will have read their own writing. I'm not going to update day-by-day for any such things. Instead, I'll only update whenever they access new information by someone else, or begin what I'm counting as a new document.

Most of the time, we know for a fact when characters get access to a new document. However, there are a few exceptions. I have my theories, but I will mark them as speculative whenever that label applies.

I break up documents based on chunks of information and have assigned titles to them as such. The labels may change as time goes by as needed to avoid spoilers. I also try to add in dates, but for any longer accounts it will just be a range of dates rather than every entry.

Below the cut is a list of all the documents, in order of appearance, with dates. I'm using color-coding for all the main authors, which will match the colors used in individual character posts. This too will be updated over time, so no worries about spoilers here either. Unless, of course, you don't want to know if someone who has only written once before will go on to write often... in that case, don't look below.

Castle Dracula Diary (3 May-30 June) - Jonathan Harker

Invitation to Castle Dracula (3 May) - Count Dracula

Letter to Innkeeper (4 May) - Count Dracula *

Letter to Dracula (5 May) - Mr. Hawkins *

Letters to Lucy (9 May, 17 May?*) - Mina Murray

Letter to Mina (2/3 May?) - Jonathan Harker *

Letters to Mina (11 May?, 24 May) - Lucy Westenra

Dictated Letters Home (11 May, 18 May) - Jonathan Harker *

Letters to Various Solicitors (11 May) - Count Dracula *

Phonograph Diary (25 May-?) - Jack Seward

Letter to Art (25 May) - Quincey Morris

Telegram Reply to Quincey (26 May) - Arthur Holmwood

Intercepted Letters Home (28 May) - Jonathan Harker *

Renfield's Notebook (5 June?-?) - R. M. Renfield *

Log of the Demeter (18 July-4 August) - Captain of the Demeter

Whitby Journal (24 July-19 August) - Mina Murray

Message to Lucy (27 July) - Arthur Holmwood *

Demeter Articles (8-9 August) - Daily Graph Correspondent

Letter from Budapest (12 August) - Sister Agatha

Letter to Carter, Paterson, & Co. (17 August) - Billington & Son

Letter to Mina (17/18 August?) - Mr. Hawkins *

Letter to Billington & Son (21 August) - Carter, Patterson, & Co.

Post-Whitby Letter to Lucy (24 August) - Mina Murray

London Diary (24 August-17 September) - Lucy Westenra

Whitby Letter (30 August) - Lucy Westenra

Letter to Jack (31 August) - Arthur Holmwood

Telegram to Jack (1 September) - Arthur Holmwood

Letter to Van Helsing (1 September?) - Jack Seward *

Letters to Arthur (2, 3, 6, 15?* September) - Jack Seward

Letter to Dr. Seward (2 September) - Van Helsing

Telegrams to Van Helsing (4-8 September) - Jack Seward

Telegram to Arthur (8 September) - Jack Seward

Telegram to John (8 September) - Van Helsing *

Telegram(s?) to Vanderpool (10, 13? September) - Van Helsing *

Delayed Telegram to Seward (17 September) - Van Helsing

Lucy's Memorandum (17 September) - Lucy Westenra

Unread Letters to Lucy (17, 18 September) - Mina Murray

Escaped Wolf Article (18 September) - Pall Mall Gazette

Telegram to Quincey (18 September) - Arthur Holmwood

Mrs. Westenra's Death Certificate (18 September) - Jack Seward/Van Helsing *

Telegram to Arthur (18 September) - Quincey Morris *

Telegram to Summon Arthur (19 September) - Jack Seward *

Hennessey's Report (20 September) - Patrick Hennessey

Letter to Mrs. Westenra's Lawyer (21 September) - Jack Seward *

Post-Whitby Journal (22 September-?) - Mina Murray

Telegram to Mrs. Harker (22 September) - Van Helsing

Letters to Mrs. Harker (24-25 September) - Van Helsing

Bloofer Lady Articles (25 September) - Westminster Gazette

Telegrams to Van Helsing (25, 29 September) - Mina Murray

Telegram to Mina (25 September) - Jonathan Harker *

Letter to Van Helsing (25 September) - Mina Murray

Post-Castle Diary (26 September-?) - Jonathan Harker

Carfax Letters (pre-3 May?) - Jonathan Harker *

Letter from Ring (24/25 September?) - Arthur Holmwood *

Note to Jack (24/25 September?) - Quincey Morris *

Undelivered Note to John (26 September) - Van Helsing

Note to Arthur and Quincey (27 September) - Van Helsing *

Message to Billington & Sons (27/28 September) - Jonathan Harker *

Reply from Billington (27/28 September) - Mr. Billington *

Telegram to Jonathan (29 September) - Mina Murray *

Carter Paterson Documents - Carter, Paterson, & Co *

* We know these documents exist, but never get to read them (or in one case, only get a brief excerpt) as they aren't added to the record. Sometimes some of the main characters do get to read them, but not always.

Question marks after a date denote uncertainty, though they're all likely written within a few days of the tentative one listed. When after a dash (-?) they mark an as-yet incomplete document.

Some documents contain others within them. When this becomes relevant for characters reading them, I will list the main document read, then all others included in it with brackets, like this:

Main document [included document one, two]

[lipshits-continuous]

Topological Spaces 1: Introduction and Metric Spaces

Welcome to the first of several posts about general topology! The goal of these posts is to give an overview and introduction to key concepts in topology. I will try to give intuitions about definitions and results so that even if you're not as aquainted with formal mathematics you can still get something from this. Whilst there aren't any prerequisties per say (for the reason above), for those who are interested in the moral formal aspects it will be helpful to be familiar with real analysis. Some familiarity with linear algebra is also helpful in this post though probably won't play a role going forward.

Topology is such a broad subject that assigning one goal is quite hard. One early goal is to generalise the notion of continuity and other familiar notions, which we shall do. Topology certainly doesn't stop there. One large goal is to find properties which are invariant under homeomorphism (bijective continuous maps whose inverse is also continuous). We shall see some examples of this as we go further!

The goal of this post is to give context to the definitions of topological spaces and continuity via the study of metric spaces. The definition of a topological space can seem quite dry and like it's been plucked out of thin air when just presented without motivation. In this sense, metric spaces are the bridge between familiar concepts in real analysis and the more general setting of topology.

1.1: Metric Spaces:

As the name might suggest, metric spaces are sets with an appropriate notion of distance between points in the set. For the real numbers, we have an intuitive sense of distance between two numbers: the absolute value of their difference. From this, we can immediately get three desirable properties we'd want a notion of distance to have:

Positivity: |x-y|≥0

|x-y|=0 if and only if x=y

Symmetry: |x-y|=|y-x|.

These are desirable because this says, in order, that distance is always positive, two points are the same only when the distance between then is 0, and the distance beween x and y is the same as the distance between y and x.

The last property is not as immediately obvious from the definition but is still a fairly intuitive property that we'd expect a notion of distance to have: the triangle inequality. Formally, for any x,y, and z real number we have |x-y|≤|x-z|+|z-y|. This just says that the distance between two points is always shorter than the distance achieved by adding an intermediate point. The name comes from visiualising this with lengths of a triangle! The proof that this holds for the absolute value can be found here.

You might ask whether there are any more properties we'd like but it turns out that this is enough to generalise a lot of concepts in real analysis in an appropriate way. That is, we still maintain a lot of nice results without requiring too many rules. So let us finally see the definition!

Definition 1.1:

Note: It's common to combine the first two axioms together but for the sake of clarity, I have separated them.

Examples 1.2:

The details of why each of these is a metric can be found in this post.

A result of the second example is that metric spaces are also an appropriate generalisation of normed vector spaces. The fact they are a generalisation is seen from the fact that the discrete metric cannot be seen as the result of a norm and isn't restricted to vector spaces.

1.2: Continuity:

Intuitively, continuous functions are ones that don't have gaps or sudden jumps. In the case of functions from the real numbers to itself, we can view this as "we can draw its graph without lifting the pencil". This can be restated as "points that are close to each other remain close to each other after the function is applied". But how does one formalise "closeness"? With distances of course!

Definition 1.3:

Remark: Continuity departs on the metrics. A function that is continuous in one metric isn't necessarily continuous in another.

Examples 1.4:

Now I'd like to prove a fairly common result to further demonstrate continuity.

Proposition 1.5:

1.3: Open Sets in Metric Spaces

Now we shall see the first aspects of topology creeping in. One way to think about open sets which don't have any points "at the edge". This is immediately clear in the definition we will give below but when we generalise the notion of an open set, we will seemingly lose this. However, we will see that this intuition will still hold!

Definition 1.6:

Example 1.7:

We will now define the notion of an open set using these open balls.

Definition 1.8:

This does indeed formalise "no points at the edge" since for open sets, all points close enough to x are always in U.

Remark: Openness depends on the metric. For example, {0} is open in the real numbers with the discrete metric but not with the absolute value metric.

Now, "open ball" would be a silly name for it if they weren't indeed open in the sense of definition 1.8 but luckily they are!

Proposition 1.9:

Example 1.10:

Open intervals of real numbers are indeed open with respect to the absolute value. If we have the open interval I=(a,b) for finite a<b, we may view I as an open ball by setting x=(b+a)/2 and r=|b-a|/2. Then I=B(x;r).

Now we shall prove a very important result about open sets that lets you build new open sets out of old opens but will also be the foundation upon which we generalise the notion of open sets!

Lemma 1.11:

Proof:

Remark: Finiteness is important for 3. If we consider the real numbers with the absolute value metric then (-1/n,1/n) is open for all (non-zero) natural numbers. However their intersection over all n is {0} which is not open in this metric.

Typically, courses would usually talk about closed sets now. However, since the discussion doesn't vary much between metric spaces and topological spaces, we will hold off for now.

1.4: Continuity in terms of open sets

This is a very important step in our journey in generalising continuity. This section with along with the next section will suggest that open sets are actually the structures we'd like to study!

Lemma 1.12:

Before we prove this, I'd like to just comment on why this still alligns with our intution about continuity. The right hand side is saying that points end up close together in Y must've been close together in X.

Remark: It is important to note that U open in X does not necessarily imply f(U) is open in Y when f if continuous. For example, take f(x)=x² in ℝ with its usual notion of continuity, then (-1,1) is open but f((-1,1))=[0,1) which is not open. Maps for which open sets are mapped to open sets are called open maps.

We will see examples of how to use the property on the right hand side in the next post!

1.5: Equivalent Metrics

The goal of this section is to see that sometimes different metrics will give rise to the same open sets!

Definition 1.13:

Example 1.14:

I will omit the details of the proof for brievity. Not that the 2 on the right hand side comes from the fact we're in ℝ² and isn't related to the 2 in the metric.

Remark: Not all metrics are equivalent. The discrete metric and d₂ are not equivalent metrics.

Proposition 1.15:

Corollary 1.16:

This ultimately means that some metrics generate the same open sets. Then Lemma 1.12 tells us that equivalent metrics give the same continuous funcitons since we can view continuity in terms of open sets. This suggests that what really matters here is which sets are open. This is what we shall exploit to generalise continuity even further! But that shall have to wait til the next post!